


Take the World in a Love Embrace

by SylvanWitch



Series: Biker 'Verse [5]
Category: Sons of Anarchy, Supernatural
Genre: Apocalyptic crossover of doom, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:54:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 54,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jax and Dean have defended Charming from armies of Scavengers and the ravaging hordes of demon-infected Freaks.  Now it's a much closer threat--politics within and extremists without the Gate--that threatens to undo all of their hard work.  Volume Three of the Biker 'Verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take the World in a Love Embrace

_There’s a reason kids make great survivors.  If you give a kid incentive to keep going, he will, no matter what he’s got to go through to get there.  That lamb and lion stuff doesn’t make much sense until you get to know a kid who’s been up against it.  Then, you’ll never again question the lamb’s chances, no matter how angry the lion is._ (The No-Shit Epistles 3:21-25 [Apocryphal])

 

It’s quiet in the woods, enough to hear the breeze in the boughs high above, the pines sighing and whispering.  Below, on a blanket of dead needles, he can’t hear his own footfalls, and it’s eerie, weird.  His breath is harsh against the silence, his heart thrumming in his ears, distracting him when he has to listen.

 

He has to hear the enemy coming, or he’s done for.

 

Dean rises from his crouch, abandoning the shelter of the fallen tree with a pang of regret, stepping over it slowly, careful not to catch his jeans on the sharp points of its shattered branches.

 

Was that a twig breaking somewhere to the right?

 

He turns just his head, slowly, with the exaggerated care of a geriatric hospital patient making his way to the john in the dark.

 

The murk under the trees gives up nothing; there aren’t any shadows here to mark movement, no advanced warning of something coming.

 

_Shit._

 

Dean steadies his breath and takes another cautious step, heading for the tenuous cover of a widowmaker leaning precariously on its neighbor.  Under its vee, he’ll be covered enough, maybe, to regroup and figure out where the enemy’s gotten to.

 

A rustle in the undergrowth to his left warns him what’s coming an instant before a piercing cry shivers down the back of his neck and makes him duck, swinging the gun around and up, too slow.

 

Too fucking slow!

 

It’s on him, all growl and spindly limbs, thrashing and snarling, and Dean falls back, the rifle useless, pinned flat across his chest as he struggles to keep the enemy away from his throat.

 

Wicked laughter taunts him for his trouble.

 

“Got you!  I got you!  You’re a loser!”

 

“Shut up,” he wheezes as Sam plants a knee in his gut to launch himself into a victory pose, hands over his head, feet spread wide, head thrown back to howl.  Dean rolls over, gets up, brushes pine needs off his ass and out of his hair.  “You cheated.”

 

“Did not,” Sam answers at once, defiance coming out with another triumphant crow.  “You’re just slow, old man.  Thought they made you bionic or some shit.”

 

“Language,” he says automatically.  Sam rolls his eyes.  “And it’s not bionic.  Doc Maartens just put in some pins and screws, cleaned out the shi—crap that had collected in the joint.”  As if proving the efficacy of the doctor’s work, Dean lifts his left leg and swings it at the knee.  “Almost good as new.”

 

“Still not good enough, though,” Sam scoffs, skipping out of Dean’s reach as the older man makes a half-hearted grab at the kid.

  
“I would have had you if you hadn’t cheated,” Dean observes, leveling the kid to stillness with a meaningful stare.  Dean’s gotten some practice at these looks in the last few months, since the Doc had cleared him to work out on his own in addition to the physical therapy he did three times a week at the Clinic.  PT’s been done for a couple of weeks, but he and the kid still train regularly.  It’s good for both of them.

 

“Didn’t cheat,” Sam insists, but there’s grudging admission in his voice that belies the stubborn thrust of his chin.  Sometimes the kid reminds Dean of his own brother so much it makes his chest ache.

 

“You had to keep the proximity target on you, remember?”

 

“And how’s that fair?  Freaks don’t wear ‘em.”

 

“Freaks,” Dean responds, in a voice that suggests this particular argument is a dead horse that’s been beaten to a pulp already, “Make plenty of noise when they’re after you.”  Which is true enough.  The infected undead—the ones whose virus mutated before Lucifer fell and therefore who didn’t die on the devil’s last day—weren’t exactly masters of ninja-like stealth. 

 

You could usually hear them coming for at least a good three hundred feet.

 

And in theory, the proximity detector was supposed to give the kid an advantage in outrunning Dean, seasoned hunter of all things evil and awful.  In fact, though, it was Dean who’d  kind of gotten used to the gentle pinging sound coming from the receiver at his belt that let him know when the kid was close by.  It was comforting, for one thing.

 

For another, it prevented a lot of humiliation.  Like what he was feeling right now.

 

Hell if Dean’s going to admit it, though.  “Where’d you leave it?”  Jerking a thumb over his left shoulder, the kid pivots and starts running.  Dean falls into pace beside him, pleased all over again at how good it feels to move swiftly without pain.

 

Sometimes the knee gives him a twinge, sometimes it stiffens and aches, especially when the weather turns damp and chilly, but mostly it’s as good as new—or at least as good as the rest of him, which is all the worse for the wear he earned during the end times and after.

 

Sam stops beside the upended, rusted hulk of an old washing machine, its insides blackened by fires the remains of which are still evident in the bottom—the dull silver glint of beer can pop tops, the charred end of a hot dog skewer, three melted plastic plugs that might once have been used shotgun shells.  Dean wonders, as he always does, about the kids who sat around the fire once, throwing back beers they’d snuck from their fathers’ garage fridge, roasting hot dogs and shooting bull, nothing but time on their hands and life ahead of them.

 

He shakes his head free of the melancholy image and watches Sam slip the proximity target into his pocket.

 

“Happy?”

 

“Thrilled.”

 

Another eye roll.  At twelve, Sam seems to have an infinite supply of them.

 

By mutual but unspoken consent, they turn away from the town and head toward the far side of the Reservoir.  Dean knows there’ll be eyes on them soon enough, a chirping of the walkie at his belt to ask if they’re okay.

  
They are.

 

“How’re things at the Hostel?”

 

Sam’s technically too young for the Hostel, a grammar school cum residence that houses orphans sixteen to eighteen along with a couple of house moms, a cook, guards on a rotation schedule, and any young adults who don’t want to strike out on their own just yet.  But given what Sam’s been through—visions of a nightmare future, his brother’s death, Dean’s near death—not to mention his considerable lexicon of very adult words, they’d thought it best he move out of the Home, an orphanage for kids up to sixteen, and into the Hostel.

  
Since Dean lives at the club with Jax, it wasn’t really an option to have Sam come live with them.  J.C. and the other sweetbutts had protested, claiming they could take care of the kid just fine, but Dean didn’t think that was such a good idea.  Especially after Sam’s reaction to the idea was, “Awesome!  Will I get to see them naked?”

 

The Hostel it was.

 

Sam shrugs—barely—a single shoulder, minimal effort at expression. 

 

_Uh-oh._

 

“What’s the problem?  You don’t like the food?”  It’s a lame attempt at diffusion, and by the sneer Sam manages with the near corner of his mouth, the kid knows it as well as Dean does.

 

They jog along for another few minutes of breathing silence, punctuated only by their harder footfalls when they clear the pines and hit the hard-packed dirt of the trail through tall, spreading hardwoods.  They’re almost at the Reservoir.

 

As he’d figured, Dean’s walkie bursts into staccato, static chatter, Morse code for “Situation report?”

 

Dean slows to a walk, but Sam just keeps going, and Dean lets worry amp up his heartrate for a second or two before he remembers that the kid’s tough.

 

Tougher for sure than his own Sam was at that age.

 

“Yeah, me and Wince just finished maneuvers in the pines.  We’re heading toward the Point.  Over.”

Every time he says it—which is a lot, given his second-in-command status and the fact that walkies are still the best mode of communication in Charming—he feels like a douchebag.

 

“Kid kicked your ass, over,” the guy on the other end—maybe Twitch or Dunn—notes.  Dean can hear more than one person laughing through the open line.

 

“All part of the plan, over,” Dean answers, scanning the trees around him, wondering if there’s someone out there watching him.

 

“Right, over.”  And he’s almost sure it’s Twitch.  No one drawls quite like the displaced Alabaman who’d joined them only a month ago but had already made himself indispensible on the heavy guns.

 

“You see Wince, over?”  The kid has thankfully grown out of the blinding migraines that had initially given him his unfortunate nickname, but as a walkie handle it had stuck.

 

“Yeah, he’s at the Point.  He looks pissed, over.”

 

“Just the usual.  Over and out.”

 

A double-click on the other end lets him know his message is acknowledged.  He’s already running when he clips the walkie back onto his belt.  Without the kid there to slow him down, Dean really opens it up, stretching his legs, letting his feet pound out a steadily increasing rhythm.  It’s not far to the Point, maybe a quarter mile, but he’s blowing and sweating when he arrives.

 

Sam coughs but doesn’t turn around when he says, “You’re louder than a Freak,” morosely and then guns a stone into the Reservoir with furious focus.

 

“Didn’t want to startle you.  Afraid you’d cry like a girl.”

 

Ordinarily, this would get at least a derisive snort out of the kid, sometimes a whip-crack retort. 

 

This time, Sam’s only answer is to hurl another rock into the water and cough again, this time harder.

 

“Nice shot,” Dean says, watching the ripples spread in a visual echo of the last rock’s waves.  Too bad they don’t have a Little League, he thinks.  Kid’d be a natural at pitching.  Taking in Sam’s expression, Dean rethinks.  Probably bean every batter on purpose.

 

“Look, you don’t have to tell me what’s wrong if you don’t want to, but at least go easy on the fish.  We need a good harvest this year.”

 

Sam pauses in his assassination attempts long enough to give Dean a disgusted look.

 

“So it was lame, alright?  But you’re not making it easy here.  You gotta give me something to work with.”

 

“D.J.’s an asshole.”

 

Oh.  Well, no shit. 

 

Of course, Dean can’t say that.  He’s supposed to be the grown-up here, tell Sam that not everyone’s going to like him, that people have to learn to deal with their differences. 

 

Bullshit. 

 

D.J. had come to the Hostel three months ago, a month after Sam’s transfer to the residence.  A hulk of a kid, perpetually red-faced and with messy blonde hair that looked like it had been cut with a lawnmower, D.J. had almost immediately taken charge of the kids living there, ordering them around like they were his to command despite the fact that many of them had seniority and a lot of them were older than the sixteen-year-old D.J.  None of them was bigger than him, though, and that seemed to be the sticking point.

 

Three days into his reign of terror, D.J. had shoved Sam into a wall.  Sam had fought back and gotten a black eye for his trouble.  One of the house moms, Denise, had had to break it up and had called Dean to suggest that maybe Sam belonged in the Home after all.

 

Jax had thankfully been there when Dean had finished that call—or rather, thrown the portable clear across the rec room.  Jax had explained with barely disguised impatience that it was not okay for Dean to beat the shit out of D.J.

 

“He’s sixteen and scared, Dean.  And the other kids need to work this out on their own.  You can’t fight Sam’s battles for him.  You gotta let it go.”

 

Bullshit.

 

“Yeah, he is,” Dean says, lowering himself to the rock beside Sam, who’s still picking off invisible targets beneath the Reservoir’s still, dark water. 

 

“I hate him.” 

 

Dean fights off a shiver and watches the ripples dissipate from Sam’s last rock.  The kid has finally relaxed enough to sit next to Dean, his skinny legs stretched out in front of him, red sneakers faded almost to pink bopping back and forth as Sam fidgets.

 

There’s a quiet intensity in Sam’s voice that unsettles Dean.  The kid understands hate more than most kids—hell, more than a lot of adults Dean knows.  Eight months ago, he’d watched his brother die brutally under the heel of a vicious killer.  He’d watched Dean savaged by a mass of barely human Scavengers.  He had plenty of practice at hate.

 

He’d also expressed that justifiable hate once by choking and then dragging a bunch of subhuman bikers to their deaths beneath God’s lightning wrath with only the power of his mind, so there’s reason to be uneasy.

 

“You can’t kill him,” Dean says mildly, like they’re talking about the weather or their chances of catching a fish for dinner.

 

Sam’s only response is a shrug, hardly a tremor of his near shoulder.  Dean sees it, though, and it’s followed by a barking cough that catches them both by surprise.  Sam doubles over, one arm across his middle, hand against his mouth.

 

“Hey,” Dean says, putting a hand on Sam’s back.  “You alright?”

Sam nods his head, takes a choking breath, wipes involuntary tears from the corners of his eyes.  “Fine,” he wheezes, but it’s a lie Sam can’t sell and Dean’s not buying.

  
“Let’s get back,” Dean says, suiting action to words and rising.  He tries not to hover, lets Sam get to his feet in his own good time, but the kid has gone pale, lips compressed tightly, and Dean can see it’s a struggle for him not to cough again.

 

He doesn’t ask the kid if he thinks he can make it the half-mile or so around the Reservoir to where the Impala’s parked.  That kind of question implies weakness and would only earn Dean a stubborn, scornful response.  Instead, he keeps worried eyes on Sam’s back, ready to grab him if he should stumble or start to fall.

 

But the kid seems okay, though he coughs now and then, short, ragged bleats that trail off into a series of gasping wheezes. 

 

As they reach the parking lot, Dean letting relief take the place of worry in his chest, his walkie squeals, the bursts equaling an alarm signal followed by the location of the problem—the Gate.

 

“Shit.”

 

“I’m fine,” Sam says, pulling open the passenger side door—no need to lock the Impala out here.  For one thing, she’s the only ’67 in Charming.  For another, she’s Dean’s, and Dean’s Jax’s, and Jax is the king of the world.  Finally, and perhaps of the most immediate significance, the parking area is within sight of four manned gun towers hidden in the treeline around the perimeter of the Reservoir.  No one messes with Charming’s water supply or Dean’s ride when she’s parked there.

 

“You can drop me at the Home on your way to the Gate.  I told Sally I’d come by and help with dinner.”

 

If Dean doubts that Sam’s motivations are entirely altruistic, he lets it go.  He’s not going to point out that Sam is going to have to return to the Hostel that night, and he’s sure as hell not going to say that avoiding D.J. isn’t going to solve the problem. 

 

He’s not a douchebag, even if he does say “Over” into the walkie when he answers the distress call with, “Be there in ten.”

 

Sam doesn’t talk on the short ride to the Home, but he doesn’t cough, either, and since Dean’s already thinking about what might greet him at the Gate—Scavengers, a horde of Freaks, another ghost from his past dragged up out of it to haunt him in the here and now—Dean’s grateful for the silence even if he does feel a little like a coward.

 

“Hey,” he musters as Sam gets out of the Impala in the Home’s driveway.  Alex is working on the truck, gives Dean a half-wave that Dean returns in like manner.  Sam turns to give him an impatient look, door already half-closed.  “Why don’t you stay here tonight?  I’m sure Sally can scare up a bed.  I’ll come by and get you for breakfast, we can talk about this D.J. thing.  Okay?”

 

Sam’s chin is set, eyes defiant when he says, “Don’t bother.  It’s no big deal,” and slams the door on the conversation.

 

Sighing, Dean backs out of the driveway and heads for the Gate, remembering another kid in another California town who said the same thing to him once.  In that case, Sam had been pissed that Dean had jumped at a chance to take an ammo run with Dad after he’d already agreed to help Sam with his knife-throwing.

 

“I’ll make it up to you, Sam,” Dean had wheedled, wearing his best charming smile.

 

It had slid off Sam like holy water off rosary beads.

 

“Forget it.  Don’t bother.  It’s no big deal.”  But it had been, and Dean remembers now with a startling and painful clarity that when he’d gotten back from the run, Sam had already mastered the art, the paper target left in a deliberately visible curl in their bedroom wastebasket.

 

“Hey, nice,” Dean had said, pulling it from the trash and admiring Sam’s accuracy.

  
Sam hadn’t answered, but when Dean had looked up at him, his little brother had worn this strange expression, like he’d somehow borrowed an older man’s eyes.

 

He sees that look in this Sam’s face too often these days.

 

Sighing, Dean slows as he approaches the Junker Bunker, which marks the internal boundary of the Gate.  He parks, checks his gun, gets out and takes a long, deep breath, steeling himself for what he might have to face.  There are no false alarms in Charming.

 

It’s another beautiful day after the end of the world.

 

*****

 

 _Two men in a room get more done if they’re fighting than if they’re talking._ (The No-Shit Epistles 12:4 [Apocryphal])

 

Dean is spread open on Jax’s bed, knees bent, toes barely touching the spread, one hand stripping his hard cock, the other reaching to where Jax stands, watching.  Dean’s mouth is wet and wide, making obscene noises when Whit Marksey says, “People with cisterns should have relaxed water use rights during wetter seasons.”

 

“That’s not fair to the people who don’t have cisterns,” Miriam Essert points out.

 

“Then they should build them,” Marksey returns before Miriam’s even finished her last word.

 

“Who’s ‘They’?” Joe Erstline asks in his butter-wouldn’t-melt voice.  Beside him, Jerry smirks.

 

“If you collect your own rainwater, you should be able to use it on your garden or for bathing.  That’s all I’m saying.”  Marksey isn’t backing down, and Jax has cleared the image from his head—and adjusted his posture—enough to see that things are about to get loud.

 

Again.

 

“Hey,” he says.

 

“And another thing:  Did I see you washing your car last week?  Jesus, Whit, it’s not like you can actually take it anywhere.  That’s a complete waste of water!” 

 

Predictably, Biddy St. Joan has added her characteristic comment to the debate.

 

Jax sighs and pinches the top of his nose.  “Hey,” he says again.

 

“What I do with _my_ water should be _my_ business, Biddy.  You’d do well to stick to your own, you know.  People are getting sick of—“

 

“People?  What people?  No one likes you, Whit.  Ever since you got here you’ve been acting like your shit don’t stink.  Well, let me tell you, I’ve been in Charming since that one there was just a bundle in his daddy’s arms, and—“  
  


 _That one there_ finally raises his voice.  “Enough!”

 

Silence falls, more or less.  There’s a restless shifting of deadened asses against the hard benches of the town council room.

 

“Look, we’ve been through this before, alright?  We don’t have supplies to pour cisterns for anyone that wants one, and the water we’d use to build them would put a serious dent in our Reservoir supply.  So you—“  Jax levels Whit Marksey a stern look.  “Shut up about the cisterns.”

 

He hears Biddy take a breath to crow and spears her next with a conspiratorial smile.  “And you should be part of Charming’s Army. You’re better at recon than most of Blue’s boys.”  Biddy St. Joan is 85 if a day, but she draws herself up in her seat as far as her widow’s hump will let her and gives Jax a wink, as if to say that she’s in on his little secret of humoring the loud-mouthed outsider.

 

“But Whit has a point.  There needs to be a system of rewards for people who aren’t putting as much of a strain on the town’s resources.  That’d encourage people to conserve what we’ve got and leave us a little breathing room if there’s a drought or if our water supply is compromised.”

 

It’s the darkest specter they share collectively.  Dean might wake up shouting at night from visions of his brother in flames.  Jax might see his dead mother out of the corner of his eye every time he enters the clubhouse.  But drought is the big bad boogeyman everyone fears.

 

Charming’s got one thousand three hundred and twenty-eight people relying on a steady supply of essentials.  And while they could probably live without electricity and gasoline, they wouldn’t last long without water.

 

“I thought we were sharing everything in common,” Miriam answers, her voice even and reasonable.  Jax hides his grimace and shakes his head.

 

“That worked before, but now—“

 

“We have too many people.”  
  


_Oh, for fuck’s sake._

 

“Eli.”

 

The wild-haired, gray-bearded hermit unfurls his emaciated length from the bench to make his point.  He’s wearing his usual uniform: faded blue flannel, holey jeans, open-toed sandals devoid of tread. 

 

“There’s only so many people this town can support, Jax.  You know it.  I know it.  All these others know it, too.  That’s why they’re getting at each other like coyotes around a road kill.  They all want what’s theirs before more people move in and take it.”

 

It’s not like the guy’s alarmist rant is original.  Jax has been hearing variations on the same theme for months now—and from more credible sources.  A steady trickle of survivors has arrived at the Gate, been tested, and entered into Charming’s relative safety since the Scavenger threat was effectively erased by the Sons and Charming’s Army eight months before.

 

And while Charming used to easily hold 4,000 people, it seems like even a quarter of that number might strain the town now to the breaking point.

 

Who knew the survival of the world’s last bastion of civilization would come down to whether or not it rained enough?

 

Well, actually…

 

“There’s no reason to think we’re going to run out of water, even if we do let more people in.  The weather patterns have done nothing but improve since the End, and every indication points to further healing of the planet’s damaged ecosystems.  We can support a much larger population than we have now and still not strain our water limits.  Regardless, I can’t believe we’re even discussing this issue again.  We cannot turn people away from the Gate who have passed God’s test.  It would be unconscionable.  I don’t know how any of you can even entertain the notion.”

 

Pastor Randall Jurgess, professional man of God and amateur meteorologist, is another familiar—albeit more welcome—voice at these open town hall meetings.  Jax doesn’t cotton to any particular religious persuasion, but he likes what the Lutheran minister has to say most of the time.

 

Except when he gets onto the topics of fornication and immoderation.  Then Jax usually finds a convenient excuse to be elsewhere.

 

A smattering of applause marks the newest arrivals to Charming, who are typically the most polite—and politely audible—in their support of an open-Gate policy for the town.

 

“So the Water Committee will consider a system of rewards for conservation of water, maybe consult with the people on the Gas Rationing Committee about it, and put together a proposal,” Jax summarizes, nodding to Ernst Anderson, self-appointed Town Secretary, who makes an ostentatious flourish on the manual typewriter’s noisy keys to indicate that he’s taken down Jax’s suggestion.

 

It doesn’t always go quite that smoothly, and lately there has been some grumbling about Jax’s use of authority, but Jax doesn’t feel like pondering—again—the perilous state of power in Charming.

 

No, he’s got more pressing issues to consider.

 

“We’ve got a manure problem,” Grady begins with no preamble, and Jax has to swallow a groan.  “And if we don’t fix it, we’re going to be neck deep in shit in a few years.”

 

 _Too late_ , Jax thinks, smothering a yawn with his hand.  _I’m already buried in it_.

 

“You think you’ve got water problems now, wait ‘til the Reservoir is full of cow shit.”

 

“There’s no need for such language,” the Reverend predictably begins, but he’s summarily cut off by Biddy’s braying laugh, which segues into a wet cough.  She waves a hand in front of her teary face at the offer of a glass of water from the council table and manages, “I’m fine,” with a wheeze.  “Just allergic to hypocrisy,” she adds a moment later, sotto voce.

  
A ripple of laughter rolls across the packed room.

 

Before the good Reverend can express his indignation, Jax hurries to say, “What’s the problem, Grady?”

 

The ex-hunter and friend of Dean’s dad had been a good choice as farming liaison.  Reliable, even-tempered, and sharp-witted, he’d never yet wasted the council’s time, which was saying something.

 

“We’ve got four hundred head of dairy cattle and two hundred beeves inside the town limits, not to mention sheep, goats, a small herd of alpaca, pigs and chickens, that’s the problem.  All that manure’s got to go somewhere, and Lom and Meghan Tso are just about out of room for their pile.”    
  
“Yup,” Eli adds.  “Damn thing’s an eyesore.  Stinks, too.”  He squats in an old bootlegger’s shack up in the woods beyond the Tsos’ cattle ranch.

 

“I don’t care about beautifying,” Grady continues, unruffled and fixed on his point.  “Just the environmental hazard.”

 

“You got a solution?”  Jax figures the guy wouldn’t have brought it up if he hadn’t already thought it through, and Grady doesn’t disappoint.

 

“Shit runs.”

 

Chibs sniggers loudly from his station by the outer doors, bringing a lot of heads around to look at him.  He crosses his arms and shoots Jax an apologetic look, but Jax just smirks back.

 

“Shit runs?” he echoes, giving Grady a look halfway between encouraging and uncertain.

  
“Load up a couple of Martin’s big spreaders, haul ‘em out past the line, dump ‘em.  Figure if we place ‘em strategically, they’d even act as a deterrent for anyone who comes looking for trouble.”

 

“I think God’s got that covered,” Jax notes dryly—incineration from above tends to discourage sinners from attempting Charming’s hospitality.  “But you make a good point.  Think we can manage it?” he asks, turning to Horse Conyer, second in command of Charming’s Army under Blue.

 

Horse shrugs, a gesture the man’s made into a sign language all his own.  In this case, Jax interprets it to mean, _What the hell?_

 

“Alright.  Write up a plan, Grady, and get it to Horse.  He and Ope can arrange a security detail for the run. And the sooner the better.  We have enough shit to deal with without the real thing piling up.”

 

He shoots the Reverend an unrepentant grin and moves on.

 

“Next?”

 

“Any word from outside?”  Miriam again, her steady voice light, hiding the hope they’ve all come to distrust in the days since the End came and went.  Other than fragmented rumors, whispers of cities in ruins and the ugly things that breed in them, there’s been no real word of the world outside of Charming.  Survivors from the Southwest and West Coast who straggle in tell of chaos and darkness, road warrior rules and survival of the fittest and most vicious.  Sons coming back from far-flung medicine runs report seeing nothing but Freaks and here and there a band of skittish Scavengers.

 

More and more, it seems like Charming is the only safe haven left for civilization’s last stand.

 

Peri Winkler wrinkles her nose and ducks her mousy head shyly.  A whiz at short-wave radio, she’s been working the dials for months trying to track down every last rumor of someone out there.  She’s gotten a whole lot of

 

“Static.”  She ducks her head again, uses her thumbnail to scrape at the council table’s greasy veneer.  “Oh,” she adds just before Jax is about to adjourn.  “But I figured out a way to send a signal farther by bouncing off existing towers.  I mean, towers that might still exist.  That did, you know…Before.  It’s not perfect, but I think it’ll get through.  Maybe.”

 

Jax nods encouragingly.  “That sounds good.  You hear anything, you know what to do.”

 

She nods back eagerly, as if the teacher has given her an easy question.  “Call you or Dean or Opie or Blue, in that order.”

 

“Good.”  There’s a shifting of weight in the room that Jax would like to attribute to a pack instinct that the meeting is coming to a close, but he knows better.  It’s Dean’s name in there that’s bugging some of them.  They don’t like that Jax’s lover and second has precedence over Opie, who, though a biker, is at least a Son of Charming as well as Anarchy.

 

It’s Jax’s personal and public policy never to apologize for or about Dean, so he ignores the muttering and reaches for the gavel, one of his favorite parts of any meeting, open or otherwise.

 

“Just a minute.”

 

Jax resists the urge to close his eyes and throw his head back in frustration.  Just once, he’d like to get through a meeting without this guy getting in his way.

 

“We haven’t yet discussed the election of officials.  My notes tell me that you’ve tabled my motion for the past three meetings, on 13 August, 18 September, and again on—“

 

“We believe you, Mitch,” Jax interrupts.  “State your piece.”

 

“You know my piece, Mr. Teller.”  As usual, Mitch sounds like he’s got a particularly pointy pineapple up his ass.  “I think we should discuss free elections of leaders of Charming, particularly now that the population has grown to include so many people not originally from the town.”

 

“Mitch,” Jax says deliberately, knowing how much it pisses the other man off to be addressed so informally.  “My answer is the same now as it was last meeting.  Charming’s in no position right now to establish a government independent of the Sons.  If and when the time comes, we’ll bring that to the table, and you’ll be the first person we ask to hear from.  But until things are more stable for us—“

 

“When’ll that be, I wonder?  When you say they are?”

 

The reedy voice takes Jax by surprise more than the interruption itself, and he looks up to see a stranger standing near the back, a few feet to the right of Chibs, who’s come to attention and is giving the guy a dark look.  Jax stands Chibs down with a subtle shake of his head and says, “Who’re you?” politely, though there’s an undercarriage of steel there that a smart man would be wary of.

 

“Jarvis Petry.  Came in a week ago from Oklahoma.” 

 

“You have some complaint about your treatment in Charming, Mr. Petry?”

 

“No,” the guy answers, shifting his weight a little.  He’s maybe forty, skinny and road-tough, tanned leather skin and washed out blue eyes.  “But that’s neither here nor there, really.  We’re talkin’ about my choices, not my treatment.  Man should have some say in how he’s going to live his life, I think.”

 

Jax doesn’t miss the scattered nods of agreement in the crowd, so many pebbles making waves.

 

“Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree for now, Mr. Petry.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why what?”

 

“Why do I have to agree with you?  What recourse do I have if I don’t?  You tell me I can’t talk about it, so I don’t talk?  How’s that American?”

 

Jax narrows his eyes and levels a speculative and not entirely friendly look at the man.  “Last I checked, Charming doesn’t have a representative in Washington, so I guess you’re out of luck in consulting the Constitution.”

 

Usually, Jax avoids ideological arguments.  For one thing, he doesn’t have a lot of patience for them.  There’s too much practical crap to wade through to worry about ideals.  For another, he was raised on Anarchism, and his go-to political position isn’t typically popular with the ordinary citizen of Charming. 

 

But finally—and this is something Ope keeps telling Jax he has to work on—Jax tends to consider himself ruler of Charming because he was the one God chose.  As uncomfortably as the mantle of power sometimes rests on Jax’s shoulders, he isn’t going to willingly surrender it when he can’t help but think it was given by a divine hand.

 

Of course, he can’t prove that.

 

There are louder murmurs now, several people talking to or at each other, and he notices Horse frowning at him in a particularly troubling way. 

 

Horse followed Blue and his people from Montana, where they’d lived on a militant separatist compound up in the mountains somewhere.  Their politics and Jax’s had meshed fine while martial law was necessary.  But now that things seem to have quieted down, Blue has been giving Jax grief about some of their more unilateral policy decisions. 

 

“Look,” Jax says, regulating his tone but letting his voice rise a little to be heard over the growing unrest.  “I know it’s not ideal.  I know some of you haven’t been here long enough to trust me or the Sons, and maybe you aren’t real happy with some of our decisions.  But for now, you’re going to have to wait.  It might seem like we’ve got everything under control, like we’re ready to start setting up a new world order, but look around you.  We haven’t even got our shit together,” he notes, with a nod and a smirk in Grady’s direction.  “How do you expect us to get anything done if we’re fighting about who makes the decisions?”

 

Petry has opened his mouth to respond, but Horse surprises them both by standing up from his chair at the council table.  “Jax is right.  Now isn’t the time for this.  Martial law is still required to protect the town, and Jax’s will is that law until such time as the council sees fit.”

 

“Then let’s put it to a council vote,” Mitch insists, standing too.  “Pick a date for a town council meeting, select witnesses from among us, and let’s—“

 

“No.”

 

Jax hasn’t budged from his seat, hasn’t so much as straightened from his characteristic slouch, but there’s no mistaking the authority in his voice.  “There’ll be no meeting, Mitch.  If and when the time comes for a vote, we’ll let you know.  That’s the way it is.  If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to leave.”

 

The susurrus of unhappy voices that had died down while the altercation had gone on rises now, resentful of Jax’s reminder of his ultimate power over them all.

 

Charming’s a safe cage, that’s certain—but it’s still a cage.

 

Jax should attempt to placate the people, should try to smooth over the upset he’s caused by his impatient words, but he’s suddenly exhausted by it all and more than a little sickened.  What do these people want from him, anyway?  Hasn’t he shed blood, sacrificed family, given up more than his fair share to keep them safe, to make Charming a place where they can raise their families without fear of the horror and chaos of the world beyond the town’s borders?

 

He bangs the gavel hard, a sharp, resounding rap that drives a wedge of startled silence into the unsettled crowd.

 

“Adjourned,” he says tersely, standing without looking around him and leaving by the door to the council chambers.

 

Ope is standing there with an expression on his face like he’s just swallowed engine oil.

 

“Don’t,” Jax orders, scowling at his best friend and VP. 

 

“I don’t have to.  You fucked up and you know it.”

 

“Whatever.  You need me?”

 

Ope nods and jerks his head toward the back parking lot of the town hall.  “There’s something at the Gate you have to see.”

 

Just by his tone, Jax can tell that whatever it is, he’s not going to like it.  With an undisguised bitter sigh, Jax falls in beside his VP and heads for their bikes.

 

As he straps on his brain bucket and brings the bike to roaring life, he has a fleeting moment of total peace, like he always gets whenever he’s riding.  It spikes in his chest like a blade of hope, cutting him loose of the shit that holds him back and weighs him down.  Then he sees Ope gesture toward the Gate and the hope fades into a sick, heavy feeling in his stomach.

 

Whoever said it was good to be king was a lying motherfucker.

 

*****

 

 _The word of God doesn’t come from people.  Sure, you get your occasional prophet.  And sometimes he’s even right.  But the fact is, if God needs a person to speak for him, he can’t be all that powerful.  People fuck up all the time, and the word of God is no different.  I say, if you really want to know what God thinks, you’re going to have to wait until you die, and then, if you’re really lucky, he won’t tell you._ (The No-Shit Epistles 27:2-8 [Apocryphal])

 

From where he’s standing, the guy’s clearly a nutjob, which isn’t actually the most troubling aspect of the tall, thin-faced man with a tangled snarl of long grey hair straggling out from beneath a slouch-brimmed black hat.  His booming voice, pitched for tent preaching, carries even to where Dean is standing just inside the Gate in the Junker Bunker.  But that’s not it, either.

  
No, the troubling thing about this particular Zealot is the size of his following.

 

When Dean had first cleared the last bend in the maze-like avenue leading to the Gate, he’d thought he was having a fit or a vision.  A sea of covered heads like the flags of a hundred nations had greeted him, the faces beneath the faded rainbow of fabrics all glowing with an internal motivation that made him deeply uncomfortable.

  
“Zealots,” he’d muttered.  “Great.”  Overhead, Grace, manning the M-50 in the left-hand Gate tower, snorted her agreement.

 

“Save us all a lot of trouble if your finger slipped on the trigger,” he added, voice carefully pitched to be heard only by the gunners to either side overhead.

 

Snorts and choked laughter greeted the observation.  “Sorry, boss,” Grace answered quietly.  “No can do.  Blue’d have my ass.”

 

Dean saves his observation about Grace’s ass for some time when she doesn’t have fifty-caliber rounds at her immediate disposal and instead turns his attention to Jax, who, as far as Dean can tell from a hundred feet away, is listening patiently to the man’s stern rant.

 

While no one would be foolish enough to accuse Dean of being the girl in their relationship—neither Jax nor Dean has any patience for bullshit stereotypes—Dean has to admit that he still gets a catch in his chest when he sees Jax asserting his authority.  It makes Dean a little breathless, watching Jax like this, cool and commanding, making the wielding of power look effortless, easy.

 

No one but Dean knows what it actually costs Jax, how hard the so-called “God’s chosen” has to work to keep it all together.  That only makes Dean hotter, in fact, the effort his lover puts in.

 

Of course, here’s neither the time nor the place.  But then, where is these days?  Between Dean’s training responsibilities and the constant demands on Jax’s time, they barely have five minutes together for a shared shower and blowjobs, much less the luxury of lying down and taking their time.

 

The head Zealot’s voice increases in its carry, and Dean tears his head away from a particularly enticing image of Jax naked and wet, swollen red lips wrapped around Dean’s cock, eyes tilted upward at a teasing angle, to pay attention to a far less pleasing mouth.

 

As he approaches Jax and Ope, he hears Jax say in a low, dangerously even voice, “Look, I understand what you want, but I’m telling you, it’s not that simple.  You can’t just decide you’re coming into Charming.  We have a process, and—“

“God’s people are commanded to answer only to Him,” the Zealot declaims.  “We have been sent to Charming to enter in and minister to its people.  Will you defy God’s command and prevent our passage?”

 

“Just who do you think you’re impressing?” Dean asks, taking his place at Jax’s left side, Ope being in his usual place to Jax’s right.

 

The Zealot doesn’t bother to look at Dean, but his lip curls at one corner in a kind of superior smile and he addresses his next words to everyone within thirty yards of the spot where they’re standing.

 

“And I say unto the people, carry the word of the Lord to all reaches of the earth, yea unto the barren wastes and the dens of iniquity, into the very house of he who claims to rule in God’s name, and bring them the one truth, whole and holy, and cast out the blasphemer who claims to be risen.”

 

“Right,” Jax says, putting a pre-emptive hand out to keep Dean from taking a menacing step toward the nutjob.  “Whatever.  I’m going to have to consult with my people and get back to you on this.  Make yourselves comfortable and try not to wander into the minefield.  It’s messy.”

 

Dean’s still thinking about clocking the Zealot when Jax turns on one sneakered heel and heads back toward the Gate.  Dean settles for giving the guy a look that promises every kind of violence and then follows, huddling with Jax and Opie under Grace’s gun tower.

 

“What do you think?” Jax is asking Ope as Dean joins the conversation.

 

Ope shrugs.  “He’s a whack-job, but he’s got a following.  Might be a problem.”

 

“We can’t bring all these people in at once, Ope.  We haven’t got the resources set up, have we?”

 

Ope shrugs again.  “I could house ‘em alright, but there’d be a food issue.  We’d have to ask Grady about meat, eggs, milk.  I know we’re short on flour.”

 

“You’re assuming they’re going to pass the test,” Dean points out. 

 

“They’re true believers,” Jax says like it matters.

 

“So what?  True believers are usually the worst from what I’ve seen,” Dean answers, giving Jax a level look that hides his growing sense of uneasiness with the direction of Jax’s thoughts.  “Besides, you don’t actually plan to take in a whole army of them, do you?  You’ve got enough problems keeping people happy without adding in a bunch of whacko religious freaks.”

 

“He’s right,” Ope seconds, looking over their heads at the assembled mass of people, who are all standing with their arms raised over their heads, faces tilted toward the pale grey afternoon sky, singing some hymn or other, maybe about shepherds and lambs.

 

They take in the scene silently for a second before Jax continues.  “Even if half of them make the cut, we’re going to have a problem.  I don’t want them at all, but I can’t just turn them away.  The Pastor’d have a fucking fit.”  Another pause.  “ _Shit_.  This couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

 

Dean watches Jax’s face, sees the lines around his mouth and eyes deepening, wants to back him into some dark corner and do things to get rid of the tension.

 

As if sensing Dean’s eyes on him, Jax catches Dean’s eyes, and for a second, his lips slide into a familiar, filthy smirk.  That look says _Later_ , clear as the Zealot’s voice that’s once again spouting nonsense about blasphemers and abominations.

 

“So are you the abomination, or am I?” Dean asks, falling into step beside Jax as they head back toward the man. 

 

Jax snorts.  “I think you are.  I’m just a blasphemer for claiming to be God’s chosen.  You’re the one who had the bad taste to rise from the dead.”

 

Dean returns Jax’s dry laugh, slows as they approach the beak-nosed preacher still barking out his scripture. 

 

“What’s your name?” Jax asks, like he’s border patrol on a routine car check.

 

“The Reverend Jeremiah S. Rounder, Church of the After End.”

 

“Uh-huh.  And these folks with you, they’d be--?”  
  


“My congregation.”  He says it as though it should be evident, like it’s an every day thing to find a self-proclaimed holy man travelling with a ragged army of religious fanatics.

 

“And why, exactly, did you choose Charming?”  Jax, for his part, adopts a bored expression, like he doesn’t know the obvious answer—there is no place else to go.

 

“This is God’s chosen city, upon which His new kingdom will be built, and we are His chosen people, here to enact His will upon the land.”

 

“And the fact that the land is already occupied doesn’t bother you at all?”  Dean can’t help but throw in.  Guys like this piss him off.  Always so smug in their certainty about God’s plan.  Dean could tell him a thing or two about the way God really works, about douchebag angels and apocalypse plans.

 

He could, but since the Rev doesn’t acknowledge that Dean has spoken at all, Dean thinks it would be a waste of time and breath.

 

“He asked you a question,” Jax notes in a deceptively pleasant tone. 

 

“God’s people do not speak to Abomination except to cast it out,” the Rev replies.  Dean can practically hear the capital letter in there.

 

“Awesome,” he remarks to no one in particular.  “I’ve always wanted a cool professional wrestling name.”

 

“You come to my town and expect welcome but treat my second and lover like shit?”

 

Dean tries to keep his surprise to himself.  It’s not often Jax brings up the more intimate aspect of their relationship.  Usually, he leaves that for people to figure out.  Now, though, it’s pretty clear Jax is after something specific, some reaction he’s hoping to incite.

 

“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.”

 

“In case you haven’t heard, the only fire God rains around here is on the heads of the sinners who try to sneak into Charming.  See?”

 

And Jax takes a deliberate step back onto the pulverized macadam of what had once been the main road into Charming.  From the melted amalgam of tar hardened to granular pills and the greasy black smears at the edges of the spot, it’s obvious what happens here.

 

Jax holds his arms away from his sides and looks to the sky.  “C’mon, Lord.  Smite the sinner!” 

 

Dean isn’t watching Jax’s showboating, though—after all, he knows it’s all for show, that no lightning will lance from the sky and burn Jax down.  He’s looking at the Rev, whose face tightens with something—an unseemly eagerness, maybe, like he wants to see violence in a way that excites him.

 

Interesting.

 

Then Jax says, “Dean,” and Dean shifts his gaze to take in his lover, standing on the obliterating spot and holding out his hand.

 

Dean already knows what he’s going to get when he takes Jax’s hand and steps onto the spot, but that doesn’t change the way heat pools in his lower belly as Jax grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls him into a deep, wet, hungry kiss.  Dean goes with it, pressing his body into Jax’s like he’ll rub himself off right there, totally ignoring the fact that hundreds of pairs of eyes are watching the show.

 

They don’t do this, not at all, or almost never.  (Exceptions are made for near-death experiences and really, really drunken parties.)  They don’t tongue-fuck in front of the Sons, don’t show their love and affection openly.  They talk dirty—the lewdest filth comes out of all their mouths—but that’s just bikers in general and Jax in particular.

 

It’s not the same as showing everyone exactly what Jax can do to Dean just by touching him.

 

Only after Jax relaxes his grip on Dean’s neck does Dean realize how tense his muscles are, how much he’s resisting the pull even as he was sinking into the heat of his lover’s mouth.

 

 _Later_ , he thinks, remembering Jax’s unspoken promise.  He lets the look into his eyes, shows Jax exactly what he has planned for when they’re alone together, out of the watchful eyes of all of these people.

 

Jax licks his lips and laughs, a breathless chuff of sound accompanied by a wicked, wicked grin.

 

Still standing firmly in the center of God’s favorite target, they turn to present a united front to the Reverend.

 

The man is pale, eyes flinty, lips a compressed line of white.    
  
Jax keeps the lascivious smile, Dean notes out of the corner of his eye, and doesn’t bother to wipe the narrow trail of glistening wet from the edges of his mouth as he says, “Guess you don’t speak for God after all.”

 

Refreshingly, the Reverend says nothing, merely pivots and stalks off toward his waiting army, some of whom, Dean can’t help but note, are open-mouthed with shock.  Others are smiling as if they’ve seen something they like, and Dean wonders if a few of them can be salvaged after all.

 

“Jax,” Ope says, warning in his voice.  Dean turns with Jax to see Sack hurrying out from the Gate.

 

“They need you at the hospital,” Sack says to Dean, then turns to Jax.  “Some kids are sick.”

 

Dean swears, a heated stream of vicious words trying to warm the cold, leaden fear in his belly.  “It’s Sam.”

 

Sack nods, swallows convulsively, darts a nervous glance toward the Zealot army.  “Can you come?”

 

Dean looks at Jax, who lays a hand on his shoulder and answers the unspoken question.  “We’ll all go.  There’s nothing here that can’t wait until tomorrow.”

 

“And God brought a plague upon the pretenders, slew their sons without mercy, for the Lord your God is angry and His justice terrible.  Repent, sinners, and embrace God’s people or see your fruit wither on the vine and watch your legacy likewise die.”

 

The Reverend has walked to the very edge of the testing circle and is staring at them, one hand outstretched toward them, the finger of judgment holding steady on where they stand just before the Gate.  His eyes are alight with a fanatical glow, his face afire with belief, and Dean catches on Jax’s face a look of uncertainty, knows his lover is wavering, wondering about God’s plan, if maybe this whackjob might be onto something after all.

 

“He’s crazy,” Dean growls, brushing past Jax and gesturing to Sack to get a move on. 

 

Jax lingers behind him for a second longer, and Dean feels the uncertainty blossom into fear, a shard of ice lodging deeper in his heart just above where the frozen lump of his gut weakens his breathing.

 

 _Sam_ , he thinks. _Not again_.  Then he’s at the Impala and moving on automatic.

*****

 

 _Sometimes the things you learn about a person in good times have nothing to do with what he’s like in bad, and that’s fine so long as you’re prepared to be the one doing the adjusting._ (The No-Shit Epistles 26:2 [Apocryphal])

 

“Where is he?”

 

Dean’s voice carries to where Jax stands, just inside the glass doors of the main hospital entrance.  He’s pissed, Jax can tell.

  
Hell, everyone can.

 

Wendy is trying to calm him, her face and shoulders tense, hands placating.

  
“I want to see him.”

 

“He’s isolated,” Jax hears as he approaches, coming up to lend Dean warmth at his right shoulder but without touching him. 

 

“We don’t know if it’s contagious or infectious.  The doctors are running tests.”

 

“Get Tara.”

 

Dean’s typically less demanding, usually more likely to wheedle than to bark, but if Wendy is afraid of Dean it’s only because she can’t read him like Jax can.  The set of his shoulders, the way a muscle tics in his jaw—Dean’s on the very edge, hands curling and releasing like he could grab hold of something and strangle it if it meant keeping Sam safe.

 

“She’s with the kids now, and—“

 

“Get her!”

 

“Hey,” Jax offers, careful not to sound like he’s trying to talk Dean down—Dean hates that psychological shit.  “Tara’s the kid’s best bet right now, Dean. You don’t want to take her away from him.  Have you talked to Alex and Sally?”

 

The keepers of the Home are on the edges of their blue plastic waiting room chairs, Alex with his elbows on his knees, head down, Sally staring anxiously at the scene unfolding between Dean and Wendy.

 

“The minute you know anything—“

 

“I’ll come right to you, Dean.”  Wendy’s voice is sympathetic and relieved as she turns away to scurry down the corridor toward the elevators.

 

Sally stands as they near, holds her hands out.  Jax takes them, squeezes as her lower lip trembles.    
  
“There are six of them, Jax.  They’re so sick…”

 

“Six?”

 

Alex has stepped up behind his wife and put his hands on her shoulders.  Jax relinquishes her hands.

“One after another,” Alex confirms.  “It all started the same, all at the same time around the table.  Sam came in coughing, then Benny, Tracy, Amos, Liv.  When we were getting ready to bring them here little Janie started; we could hear her on the monitor from the nursery upstairs.”

 

“What is it, the flu?” Jax asks.

 

Alex shakes his head.  “They don’t know.  They said it might be whooping cough, but a couple of the kids came in with that a few months back—“

 

“August,” Sally adds in, as if it’s important. 

 

“And it didn’t act like this.” 

 

“Did Sam bring it with him?”  Dean’s question is quiet, voice rough, like it’s coming from the back of his uncleared throat.  Jax looks at his lover, sees the fear he’s trying to hide from these people.

 

“We wondered,” Alex answers, but not like he’s accusing.  “Did you do anything different, go anywhere new for training today?”

 

Dean’s shaking his head before the questions are done.  “No.  Nothing.  He ran ahead of me to the Point, and when I got there, he was already coughing a little.  It got worse, but when we were walking back to the car it seemed to clear up.  I figured it was just a cold.  He seemed fine when I dropped him off.”

 

Dean looks at Alex for confirmation, and the other man nods and then looks away, out the front window, staring at nothing, probably.

 

Jax hears the anguish of self-recrimination in Dean’s voice, wants to hook an arm around him and lead him to some quiet, private space, the chapel where they used to meet whenever one Son or another ended up in here, and hold him and tell him it’s going to be okay.

  
Wouldn’t be the first time he’d lied in the house of the Lord.

 

“Are there forms to fill out?” Jax asks instead.  Dean isn’t going anywhere until they have some word on Sam.

 

“We took care of it,” Sally answers, looking around them like there might be something else she could do.

 

“Let’s sit back down.”

 

It’s the kind of waiting Jax hates the most, the kind when your head comes up with a thousand futile solutions to a problem you have no control over fixing.  Beside him, Dean’s bad leg bounces his foot rhythmically against the dull floor tile, and he seems to be humming under his breath but so low that even Jax, nearest him, can’t make out what the song is.

  
He figures it’s Metallica.

 

“I have to call Ope,” he says after awhile, reluctant to leave Dean but unable to take the waiting a minute longer.  Dean nods distractedly and picks up the same magazine he’s discarded twice already.

 

The glass doors hush closed behind him and Jax takes in a deep breath tinged with a cigarette burning down to its filter in the sandy ashtray to one side.  He goes upwind and palms the walkie, clicks the code for Ope and switches over to their private channel.

  
They don’t know for sure that no one listens in, of course, but they don’t worry too much about it, either.  People mostly know better, and the ones who don’t will learn.

 

“Yeah?”

 

They aren’t real formal on the walkies when it’s just the Sons.  Jax feels like a douchebag every time he has to say “Over” to Blue or Horse.

 

“What’s the situation at the Gate?”

 

“Guy’s out there making noise, some people are setting up tents.  I think we’re clear for now, but if they start blocking the road for other survivors, we’re going to have a problem.”

 

“You need me there?”

 

“Nah.  How’s the kid?”

 

“Kids,” Jax corrects.  “Six of ‘em.  Don’t know yet.  Tara’s with ‘em now.”

 

“Let me know.”

 

A couple rushes past Jax as he’s finishing the call, but he doesn’t pay much attention until he hears a woman wailing as the doors close behind them.

 

He follows them into controlled chaos, the woman running the information desk out from behind it, Wendy heading at a jog toward the couple, Dean on his feet and almost to them.

 

“Plague!” Jax hears, and then Dean is spinning the woman by her elbow, glaring into her stricken face.

 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he barks, moving too close to her, and the husband, a tall, lean guy with a long nose and receding hairline, shouts, “Get thee behind me Satan!” and Jax almost has to laugh at the transformation that comes over Dean’s face—anger replaced by scorn and a wicked, bitter light.

 

“If I’m Satan, nutjob, you have a bigger problem than plague on your hands,” he sneers, voice pitched so that everyone can hear him, in his own way just as effective as the Reverend at the Gate.  “’Cause I put him back in the Pit myself and died doing it.  You up for the challenge?”

 

He’s still holding the woman’s arm with a kind of casual disregard, like he’s almost forgotten her.  With a frightened squeak she wrenches out of his grip and scuttles toward the door.  Her husband follows with a kind of stutter-step, like a confused wading bird frightened by the rising waves.

 

Jax clicks the walkie for a general call, says, “Hospital,” into the mic, puts it back on his belt.

 

The phone on the information desk rings and rings, forgotten by its keeper, an overweight, frazzled woman improbably named “Serena” if the nametag on her ample chest actually belongs to her.

“You should get that,” he suggests, chin indicating the phone.  She shoots him a frightened glance and hurries back to her post, a breathy, “St. Thomas’” out of her mouth before she’s all the way back in her chair.

 

“You okay?”  He asks it like he already knows the answer, like Dean’s fine, and Dean shrugs and heads back for the chairs, where Sally and Alex had stayed out of the way of the upset.

 

“Who were they?” Sally asks, obviously shaken.

  
“Just a couple of Zealots,” Jax answers, dismissing her concern by his tone.  In fact, he’s more than concerned—he’s pissed and worried.  He didn’t recognize the couple, but they could be new people—a lot of the last few groups had been Zealots seeking the Promised Land.  Still, if there’s any chance they’re from the Reverend’s camp, he’s got to know.  It means they’ve got a perimeter breach and spies on the inside.

 

Sack comes through the door a minute later, and Jax gives him a description of the couple, tells him to organize the Sons to sweep the streets and track them down.

 

“Find them, and when you do, take them to the safehouse.  I’ll meet you there later.”

 

“What do you think they did?”  Sack’s a good soldier, doesn’t usually ask questions, but his eyes keep straying over Jax’s shoulder to where Dean sits staring holes into the floor and clenching and unclenching his hands.

 

“Might be nothing.  Might be the Reverend’s got more resources than we thought.  Just find ‘em, Sack.”

 

Sack nods, shoots a wave to Dean, who returns it, and then the kid is gone.  When the doors open to let him out, Jax hears the reassuring rumble of Harleys nearing the looped drive out front.  The Sons’ll take care of it.

 

Back to waiting.

 

Jax has taken his bike apart twice in his head and has it stripped down to the cylinders for a third time when Tara comes through the double swinging doors leading back into the empty wing, the one they keep closed off to conserve energy.  She’s wearing a heavy blue mask and doubled gloves, the top pair blue, too.

 

Shit.

 

She gives Jax a weak smile but stops in front of Alex and Sally, canting her body so she includes Dean in the discussion.  They’re all on their feet, ringing her in a half-moon, when Jax approaches, hearing, “Virulent strain.”

 

“It’s not the whooping cough,” she says in a tone that indicates she’s used to repeating herself.  “Whatever it is, it works fast.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Doctor Hong has it in the lab now, but it’s going to take time.”

 

“What do you need from us, Tara?” Jax asks.

 

“We just don’t know, Jax.  We have to wait for the test results, find out what it is, before we can treat them.  Right now, we’ve got them on IV fluids and are just trying to keep them comfortable and quiet.”

 

“Can we see them?”  Sally’s voice is wrung tight, and it makes Jax’s heart stutter.  He looks at Dean, who’s stone-faced, clamped down tight on whatever he’s feeling.  His heart bucks against his ribs again.

 

“It’s not a good idea.  We don’t really know if it’s infectious, which is why we’ve put them in the east wing, away from the other patients.  We’re using CDC protocols until we know more.  I’m sorry I can’t give you better news.”

 

Despite her professionalism, Jax can hear Tara’s sorrow, and he squeezes her shoulder and leans in to say, “Thanks,” low in her ear, so she knows he means it.  She gives him another strained smile and replaces the mask over her face.  “I’ll let you know as soon as Doctor Hong has the results, but it’s going to be hours…”

 

“We should go back to the Home,” Alex says.  “We left Ray-ray in charge.”  Ray-ray is the oldest of the Home’s charges, fifteen going on fifty.  Still, he’s just a kid.

 

Sally nods, looking at Dean with a question. 

 

“I’ll call you soon as I hear anything,” he promises.

 

Jax follows them out to find Juice at the door.  “We got ‘em.”

 

“Good.  I’ll be there in ten.”

 

“Take your time.”  Juice’s smile is the unsettling kind, and Jax feels his mouth stretch around an answering look.

 

Back inside, he finds Dean pacing in the elevator lobby, hands fisting and stretching.

 

“Hey,” he calls, grabbing Dean’s focus and jerking his head down the longer hall that leads to the ER.

 

There’s no one in the chapel.  Melted wax and wood polish give the air a church smell Jax always associates with dying.

 

“Altar’s not big enough,” Dean deadpans, and Jax follows his eyes to the nondenominational table draped in a drab green cloth at the front of the small room.

 

“No, but we could probably make do over there by that stack of bibles.”

 

Dean snorts.  There’s not much energy to it, but he musters up a half-grin, too, and they share a quiet moment of remembering the last time they’d been in a church together.

 

“That was nearly two years ago,” Jax says, something like wonder in his voice.  He can hardly wrap his head around it, how much has changed.  Then he looks at Dean, who’s slumped into a pew at the back, and the same hungry ache starts up under his breastbone.

 

Some things haven’t changed at all.

 

“This isn’t right, Jax.  Something’s going on.”

 

“You think it’s the Reverend?”

 

Dean shoots him a _no shit_ look.  “Too coincidental he shows up and kids start getting sick.”

 

“We’re working on it.”  Jax fills him in on the safe-house and its newest occupants.

 

“You want me to—“

 

“Forget it.  We’ve got it.  You stay here and let us know as soon as Tara finds out something about the meds.”

 

“You figurin’ on a run?”

 

Jax nods.

 

“I’m in.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Jax sits beside Dean, leaning his weight against the other man, a steady pressure until Dean turns toward him and Jax can read his eyes.

 

“He’ll beat it, Dean.  He’s strong.”

 

Dean nods, blinks fast, starts to turn away again, but Jax is faster, wrapping a hand around his nape and holding him still so he can lay an almost chaste kiss against Dean’s lips.

 

Dean follows him out of it, pushes him into the corner of the pew.  It’s an awkward angle, wood digging into his back, but he can hardly feel it for the fire spreading quick low in his belly at the hot, wet thrust of Dean’s tongue and the way his near hand kneads Jax’s thigh.

 

When Dean lets him up, Jax is panting, his dick pressing uncomfortably against his zipper, and he can feel a bloom of stubble-rash on his cheek. 

 

“Later,” Dean says, putting promise to words, not saying _after_ because they both hear it.  After Sam is better.  After this shit at the Gate is put down or away.  After they settle their political problems.

 

Always after.

 

“No,” Jax says.  “Tonight.”  Maybe it’s not the right time to press it, but he’s suddenly surer than he’s ever been that there’s no time to waste.  The urgency comes up out of him like a sound, leaves him panting, chest tight, and Dean sees it, nods, eyes full of shadows.

 

“If—“

 

“I know.”  Jax doesn’t want Dean to finish the sentence, doesn’t want to put them right back where they were when they walked in here.

 

“You go take care of this Reverend shit,” Dean says.  “I’ll call when Tara has news.”

 

Jax wishes they could stay in the Chapel awhile longer, wishes they could lock the doors and hunker down under the little altar, pretend to be miles away, surrounded by demons but somehow safer than he feels right now, with uncertainty pressing him into the pew and Dean’s face a mask of confidence neither of them believes.

 

“See ya,” Jax says when they reach the main entrance. 

 

“Yeah,” Dean answers, filling in the second half of their usual parting refrain.  It’s not romantic, not even original, but it’s a promise of a kind that there will be a next time, another chance.

 

It’s the best they can offer, Jax knows.  Sometimes he just wishes it were more.

 

*****

 

 _Hope is a treacherous bitch.  Can’t live with her, can’t live—long, anyway—without her.  Best you can do is a middle state, not really setting your hopes on a definite future but wishing instead for an indefinite present, the kind of moment that holds and keeps, outside of time and so outside of hope’s vicious grip._ (The No-Shit Epistles, 39:18-20 [Apocryphal])

 

The two miles to the clubhouse might as well be twenty for the time it takes Dean to get there.  He’s so tired he can’t keep his eyes from falling closed against his will, can’t see the road clearly even with them open.  The wheel seems to sway and buck under his hands, but he’s pretty sure that’s just a hallucination.

 

When the wall of stacked tires that rings the clubhouse lot finally blurs into view, he swears with gratitude, feels involuntary tears prick at the corners of his eyes.  For a heart-clenching moment, he feels it:  Home.

 

Then he’s parking, staggering out of her, fumbling with his keys to check that the weapons locker in the trunk is secure.  The walk to the clubhouse door seems to take a glacial age, and by the time he pin-balls his way down the hall, one shoulder is sore from repeated impacts with the wall and he’s tripping on his own boot-toes.

 

He can’t decide whether he’s relieved or disappointed to see Jax at a table by himself, nursing a beer.  A quick scan of the rec room and bar tells Dean they’re alone in the big room, and he slumps into the chair next to him with a quiet groan.

 

Jax takes him in in the way he has of making Dean feel uncomfortable and excited both.  There’s an ownership in Jax’s eyes that guarantees Dean’s belonging even as it promises the ties will never hold Dean down.

 

Sometimes he wishes he could just let Jax have it all, let him be the guy, for lack of a better term.  But it’s never that simple, not for Dean, who didn’t learn to stop taking orders until he filled the very last one his father ever gave him and killed the brother he loved.

 

Jax isn’t Sam.  Isn’t Dad.  Isn’t anything like the men he knew Before.  The love he gives Dean isn’t conditional, but Dean keeps looking for strings anyway.  He knows he’s bound, but he can’t figure out how, exactly, and that’s why Jax’s look makes him want to bend under his lover’s weight even as it tries to push Dean toward the door and the Gate and the wide open road beyond.

 

“Hey,” Jax says, lips pursed to take another pull.  “Want one?” he asks after swallowing.

  
Dean’s eyes can’t help but trace the progress of the beer, down the bob of Jax’s throat to the hollow where his collarbones meet, just visible above the collar of his white tee.  Below that, he can make out the stenciled O and N in the gap the cut leaves.  Jax has lost some weight in the last few months, and the shirt is loose, shifting with his breathing, just hinting at the muscles of Jax’s abdomen, of the power of him.

 

Dean thinks Jax’s fire sits in his belly, low, pooling there like lava between the tight wall of his stomach and the hard knot of his tailbone.

 

God, he must be tired.  Where else would he get this shit?

 

“No,” he manages, belatedly remembering that Jax has asked him a question.  He looks up to see amusement in Jax’s eyes, a knowing heat that makes Dean want that beer after all, if only to have something to do with his hands.  They’ve got too much to talk about for him to give in to what Jax’s look clearly suggests.

 

As if sensing Dean’s temptation, Jax sits back in his chair, slouching, legs wide.  It’s an unmistakable invitation, and Dean nods in acknowledgment of Jax’s power over him even as he says, “We’ve got to talk.”

 

“You look wrecked.  It can wait ‘til morning.”

 

Dean wishes that were true, but if they’re going to save the kids ( _Sam Sam Sam_ ), he’s going to have to be on the road by mid-morning.

 

“How’s the kid?” Jax asks, reading Dean’s expression.

 

“Holding his own.”  Tubes in his nose, lines snaking around him, machines beeping.  Looking like some other kid, like a war refugee, pale and skinny and fragile, with smoky dark circles under his eyes and blue veins visible where the tape from the IV pulls at the thin skin of his inner arm. 

 

Jax’s hand brushes Dean’s where it rests on the table, but Dean doesn’t look up, can’t.  Can’t see compassion on Jax’s face or love or worry or any of it.  Not with what’s coming.

 

“Tara says they don’t know what it is for sure, but she thinks they have enough to prescribe a treatment.  She gave me a list.”  It takes him maddening seconds to get it out of his back pocket and smooth it open on the table.  He wrote it out—Tara’s handwriting is illegible even when her hands aren’t shaking from exhaustion and frustration.

 

They look at it with mute incomprehension for a minute.

 

“She give you any idea where we can find this shit?”  Jax says at last.

 

“She said Cedars Sinai is our best bet.”

  
“No.  No way.  You are _not_ going to L.A.”

 

This wakes Dean up a little, pisses him off enough to push him upright in his seat and square his shoulders.  He can feel an expression hardening on his face, can see Jax’s chin set, see by his eyes that he’s not going to give in.

 

“It’s the best chance we’ve got of finding any of these, Jax, and you know it.  The shit we’ve been pulling in the last few months is peanuts compared to what we could get in L.A.  Tara says if Cedars Sinai doesn’t work out, there are two kids’ hospitals in L.A. and there’s Barlow, too.”  Dean consults the paper.  “They specialize in respiratory care.”

 

“Doesn’t matter what they’ve got in L.A. if you don’t survive to bring it back.  No way.  No.  I’m not risking my guys—“

 

“Why don’t you let _them_ decide?”  Until now, they’d been keeping it down, but Dean is desperate and angry and a little hurt that Jax can still think about the fucking Sons when it’s Sam lying there dying in a hospital bed.  He barks it, hard and sharp.

 

But Jax doesn’t bark back.  In a voice stripped to a raw whisper, Jax says, “I’m not risking _you_.  Not again.  I can’t.” 

 

Like that, Dean’s anger is gone, burned to cold ashes on his tongue.  Jax’s eyes are hooded but fixed on Dean’s.  Anger spots flare on his cheeks, but his lips are a white line of tension, and Dean can see in every angle and hollow of his lover’s face that Jax is maybe as desperate as Dean but for different reasons.

 

“I can’t, man.  I’m sorry.” Jax means it, but that doesn’t matter.  Can’t.

 

“You don’t have a choice.”  It’s not a threat.  He learned a long time ago that threats don’t work on an outlaw biker king.  It’s not a plea, either.  It’s a fact, bare and plain.  “If I don’t go, those kids’ll die.  Hell, they might die anyway, even with the meds.  Tara says it’s not a sure thing.  But Jax, you know I have to try.  You _know_ I do.”

 

Jax’s eventual nod is a jerky, ugly gesture, like his neck snapping in slow motion, and he looks away, won’t give Dean his eyes. 

 

“I’ll come back.”

 

Jax’s face swings back to face Dean and the light in his eyes is unpleasant, outrage mingled with sorrow and an abiding weariness they all wear like armor, like the world can’t beat them any harder than it already has.  “You don’t know that.”

 

Dean shrugs, tired and a little queasy with the hospital smell that clings to his hair and his clothes.  “No, I don’t.”  They’ve been through too much to start lying to each other again now.

 

Jax is methodically peeling the wet label from his beer bottle, and Dean knows he needs a minute, has seen the hole-drilling stare before, even been the object of it once or twice, so he gets himself a beer at the bar, takes his time opening it, flicking the cap into the trash with a practiced twist of his thumb.  Opens a second bottle, guns the cap away.

 

When he comes back to the table, Jax is sitting up again, eyes on Dean, face a mask of almost professional indifference.  He gives a half-nod for the beer Dean delivers and waits until Dean’s settled before he starts.

 

Dean’s expecting details of the med run, personnel, firepower, transportation. 

 

Jax has other things on his mind.

 

“The nutjobs from the hospital were with the Reverend.”

 

“They got through the perimeter?”  A frisson of deep unease sours the beer on Dean’s tongue.

 

“Nope.  They were admitted two weeks ago, all aboveboard.  I signed the housing approval myself.”

 

“So what were they—scouts?”

 

Jax nods, takes a swig.  “Ope went through the records, found two more possible admissions like them, though they swore on a bible—literally, you should have seen Bobby whip that sucker out—that they didn’t know of anyone else.  They could’ve been telling the truth.  They were pretty scared.”

 

“You have to get rough with them?”  He knows Jax isn’t above a little torture for information, but of the two of them, Dean’s better suited to it—the price of experience and practice.

 

“Nah.  Ope just glowered and stalked around the woman—Susan—and the husband, Keith, just caved.  Took five minutes.”

 

“This guy’s not just a whacko, Jax.”

 

“No shit.  Me ‘n’ Bobby are meeting with Reverend Bowmiller tomorrow.”

 

Dean grimaces, feeling some sympathy for Jax.  He’s not sure which of the two of them has the worst task to tackle.  “Bowmiller’s a prick.”

 

Jax snorts and takes a long pull of his beer. 

 

Benjamin “Bull” Bowmiller had ridden—literally, on a white horse, of all fucking things—up to the Gate three and a half months ago and demanded entry “In the name of the Lord God of Hosts.”  After he and his mount—he’d refused to get down, saying the horse was a creature of the Lord and his to command as one of God’s “heavenly cavalry”—had survived the Test, they’d ridden into Charming at a gallop, only stopping when Chibs and Juice blocked the street on their Harleys and revved their engines, making the horse shy and snort.

 

Bowmiller had gotten down quick enough after that, but only to insist that he be shown to the nearest available church, of which there were many in Charming.  Ope had put him up at the Deliverance Baptist Church on Muir Avenue, where he’d immediately opened for business.

 

Since then, he’d attracted all the more zealous religious types who’d arrived in Charming since the End and a few surprising converts from Charming’s original residents.  His formula for success seemed to be a steady diet of fire and brimstone sermons marking the chosen for salvation and vilifying anyone different—gays, liberals, vegetarians, “godless heathen”—balanced by social events catering to “family values” of the sort that promoted good will, chastity, and moderation.

 

Needless to say, the Sons were never invited, not that they’d have come even if they had been.

 

“You think he can help?”

 

Jax’s shrug says fuck all if he knows.  “Fire with fire.”

 

“You should talk to Chuck.”

 

Dean’s personal prophet had settled in nicely in Charming, found a job, hadn’t mentioned any sort of “celestial noise,” as he called it, in a long time.  He came by the clubhouse now and then, had a beer.  He never stayed long—Dean thought the guys made him nervous—but he seemed happy.  He almost hates suggesting it, but Jax needs Chuck more than Chuck needs his peace of mind.

 

“Yeah, I figured I’d see him next.”  Something in his tone makes Dean look more closely at him. Examining Jax’s face, Dean sees in it a troubling doubt, like Jax is entertaining deeply uncomfortable ideas about the Reverend Rounder.

 

“You’re not taking this guy’s prophet of the Lord bullshit seriously, are you?”  
  
Silence.

 

“C’mon, man, you had your own prophet, you know what that looks like.  This guy is nothing like Tig.  Or Chuck.”  Granted, no one’s like Chuck.  “He’s not even like Sam.”  Sam hadn’t had a vision since he’d foreseen his own brother’s awful demise, but Dean isn’t convinced the kid doesn’t still have powers.  Thinking of Sam brings the fresh image of the kid dwarfed by the white sheets of his hospital bed and deathly still but for the slight rise and fall of his rattling chest.

 

At last, Jax says, “Nah, it’s probably nothing.  It’s just—“

 

Dean’s seen Jax in a lot of moods, but hesitant and maybe embarrassed isn’t one of them.

  
A little hurt that there’s anything Jax thinks he can’t say to him, Dean says, “What?  ‘It’s just’ what?”

 

“What if he’s onto something about the plague, Dean?  What if…I don’t know, I’m doing something wrong?  What if this is God’s way of telling me it’s time to let someone else do the job?  It’s not like there’s a fuckin’ manual for being king by divine right or whatever the fuck this is I’m doin’.”

 

“In my experience—“

 

And he doesn’t have to say how much that is; they both know the landscape of desolation the angels had laid down for Dean and Sam, never mind what their little war in heaven and hell did to the world itself. 

 

“—God doesn’t talk at all.  Not in signs, not through prophets.  At best, he sends mixed signals to fuck around with us.  At worst, angels who can’t figure out what the fuck God wanted them to do anyway.  It’s all bullshit, Jax.  There is no wrong or right way to do what you’re doing because there is no plan.  Sooner you accept that, the easier it’ll be to take care of all this crap.”  Dean waves the bottle in a broad, sloppy circle to indicate the scope of Jax’s reach.

 

“And what if you’re wrong, Dean?  What if this is a new beginning and we’re supposed to be building something better than what we had before?  Maybe I’m just the cleaner, leaving things spotless for the next in line.”

 

He can feel the bitterness of his smile, see it in the way Jax flinches—barely a flinch, but there, perceptible since Dean’s looking for it.  He doesn’t care that his face is ugly because that’s how his heart feels.  “I’m telling you—you spend too much time trying to work this out it’ll make you crazy, and in the end all you’ll have is what you started with:  yourself, the people around you, the world as it is.  There is no plan, Jax.  There is no divine guidance.  But hey, what do I know?”

 

That’s not fair, and even as Jax takes in a breath to protest, Dean’s breathing out a harsh breath himself and saying, “Sorry.”

 

Jax nods.  “These assholes out front are probably posers, Dean, but I gotta do my homework.  What if they pass the test?”

 

Dean nods thoughtfully, takes another swig of beer. “You might have to burn these fuckers down, Jax, drive them away before it comes to that,” he says at last.  Jax’s mouth tightens and he shifts in his chair.

“That’d be great, but it’s not that simple, Dean.  There’s other shit, political shit.  We can’t just do what we want.”

 

“Trouble at the meeting?” 

 

By his expression, it’s clear that Jax has forgotten again just how quick Dean can be at putting things together.  Dean gives him a steady look while he rides out his surprise.

 

“Mitch.  Biddy.”  Dean snorts and shakes his head, grinning.  He likes the old bat.  Of course, he doesn’t have to attend town hall meetings.  “Some new guy, Petry, from Oklahoma.”

 

Dean sits up.  “Tall guy, sounds like someone’s got his sac in a vice grip?  Yeah, I met him when he came through the Gate.  Helped Ope get him set up.  He givin’ you trouble?  I could take care of that for you before I head out…”

 

Jax’s look is impatient, voice sharp.  “We can’t keep ‘taking care of’ our problems like that, Dean.  We have to...to—“

 

“What—negotiate?  Bullshit.  You’re king of the fucking world, Jax.  It’s your show.  Anybody doesn’t like it, they can leave.”

 

“No, Dean, they can’t just _leave_.  We can’t make them leave.  That’s the same as killing them and you know it.  Don’t you get it?  We joke about me being king, but that’s what I am, Dean.  I’m king, and this is my kingdom, these are my people.  I can’t go around making unilateral decisions based on how I feel or what I think.  I have to take things into account that I didn’t before.  We aren’t at war now.  It can’t be all about fighting.”

 

Dean considers Jax for a long moment, taking in the anger in his face, the way his eyes are hard with it, the way his cheeks are colored with frustration.  He wonders when it was that Jax became a politician and then reminds himself that that’s unfair.  Jax isn’t in this for power or gain; he was chosen.  More than that, he’d have stepped up to it anyway because he loves Charming and he was born to protect its people.

 

Born to it.

 

“You’re right,” Dean concedes.  He usually is when it comes to Charming, but Dean doesn’t add that.  What he says instead might be more to the point anyway.  “Whatever you want, Jax, I’m here.”

 

Except he won’t be.  Neither of them say it, but it sits there, a couple of tons of stinking truth, before Jax stretches his arms out above his head, his shirt riding up to reveal a thin strip of hard belly.

  
He’s changing the subject again, but Dean’s fine with that.

 

Or will be once they’ve figured out—

 

“Who’s going with me?”

 

“Ope, Juice, Chibs, and Sack.” 

 

“No,” Dean answers immediately.  “That’s your whole starting line-up.”  Jax has just named the majority of Samcro’s heavy hitters.  Besides, “Ope won’t leave you, not with the Reverend at the Gate and this plague rumor spreading.”  He hadn’t mentioned it, but there’d been a milling group of worried people outside the main entrance of the hospital when he’d come out at 1:00am to get some air.

 

“You’re gonna need ‘em.  Even before the End, L.A. was a fucking nightmare.”

 

True enough.  When martial law had failed, L.A. was among the first cities to break—looting, burning, old school Viking-style pillaging.  They’ll be lucky if any of the hospitals are still standing, never mind with intact pharmacies.

 

“So give me a couple of new patches instead of Ope and Chibs.  You can’t gut the club in the middle of a power struggle, Jax.  That’s just bad business.”

 

He’s right.  He knows it.  Jax knows it.  But Jax is wearing an expression Dean has seen before, one that makes his stomach sink, a weight of ice pooling in his guts. 

 

“Take ‘em or stay.  That’s your choice.  I’m king, remember?”  He says it like he’s joking, but there’s nothing funny about it, and it’s clear from Jax’s face, the way the smile slips away, his eyes serious, intent, pinning Dean, waiting.

 

Waiting for what Dean’s going to say.

 




 

They flirt with Jax’s power sometimes, when Dean is on his elbows, ass in the air, Jax driving into him, ordering him not to come, not to touch himself.  It makes Dean pant and groan, makes him have to bite back begging words. 

 

That’s not the same thing at all, though. 

 

The air is charged all at once with ominous silence.  If Dean pushes, Jax pushes back.  If Dean concedes, they can pretend they haven’t just gotten closer to the one thing that might drive them apart.

 

A part of Dean is sure this thing with Jax is still a dream, that he’s going to wake up naked and burning in the desert, his brother’s screams splitting his ears, his heart shattering with every frantic beat.

 

Dean blinks back to the dim room, to Jax’s face limned by the single light over the table, to his hand, curled on its side near the bottle, like it had only just been cupping the wet glass.  He can see moisture gathered in the deep line that bisects his palm, can see calluses he knows from experience are rough and hard, the way he likes them.

 

He wants this, even if it makes him feel a little lost as he sits in the only home he’s ever had that isn’t on four wheels.

 

“Okay.”

 

Jax lets out a relieved breath, smiles with the break in tension, stretches again as he rises from his seat, so that Dean can make out the scattered blonde hair arrowing down from his navel, a trail he wants to follow with his tongue.  
  
“You need sleep,” Jax says, but he bites his lip deliberately, rakes his eyes over Dean in a way entirely counterproductive to that particular goal.

 

“Guess I’d better bunk with J.C. in that case, huh?”

 

“Shut up.”

 

And there it is—command, just enough to make Dean suck in a breath, stand quicker than he’d intended, exhaustion and altitude making him sway, the room swooping around him.

 

Jax’s hand on his elbow steadies him and his face is all genuine concern when he says, “Hey, maybe you should _just_ sleep.”

 

Dean silences him by stepping into his space and sucking his lower lip into his mouth.  “Shut up,” it’s his turn to say.

 

The bed is a mess, as usual, and there are clothes strewn in untidy piles, clean or not, like odorous minefields on the room’s narrow space of floor around the king size bed.  They stumble a little, unwilling to stop touching, unable to get enough of each other’s mouths and hands to navigate them.

 

Dean isn’t firing on all cylinders to begin with, but once Jax drops his cut and skims his tee-shirt over his head, his head shuts down except for essential words like “Fuck” and “Yes” and “God,” which he breathes wetly onto Jax’s naked skin as they each struggle with the other’s belt, button, zipper, shoes.

 

At last, naked and hard, both of them staring, the scant space between them charging the air with the suggestion of heat, they pause, Jax to drag a devouring look down the length of Dean’s body, stopping, Dean knows, at the scars ringing his knee.

 

This is where his eyes snag these days, the miracle place that gave Dean back so much more than easy mobility.

 

Dean’s eyes are on a different miracle, the open, raw want on Jax’s face, the flush of his cheeks, the way his tongue traces his lips like he’s already tasting Dean.

 

Dean feels it like an electric touch when Jax’s eyes suddenly meet his again, the intention of it, the certainty of what’s next like a hand on him, stroking.

 

Back to the bed, he has nowhere to go but down when Jax closes the last inches between them, and he plunges without a second thought, spreading his knees, using his heels to crab-walk his way toward the pillows, Jax following with a pinioning knee between his legs, a bracketing arms that bend, muscles flexing like he’ll hold Dean down, lips skimming Dean’s jaw, teeth fastening on his throat.

 

Dean grunts and rocks upward, their skin hot where it joins, the friction almost too much when the head of his cock catches against the hard muscle where Jax’s abdomen cuts away. 

 

“Fuck,” Jax growls, shifting his attention to Dean’s chest, gathering the meat above his left nipple between his teeth, biting steadily until the pressure builds to pain and Dean’s hips stutter against his will, his breath broken and harsh when he warns, “Close.”

Gone on it, body moving without his will, Dean lets out a breathy sound of protest when Jax stills and pulls away, waiting for Dean to focus on his face above him.

 

“Come inside?” he asks.

 

“Yeah,” Dean answers, wonder and love in it.

 

Jax pushes himself up and away, sits on his heels and nods toward the night stand.  Dean obliges by craning for the lubricant they keep in the bedside drawer.

 

He opens it, eyes on his lover’s face, pours it into Jax’s ready hands, absently closes the cap and drops it off the side of the bed as Jax rubs his hands together, coating his palms before reaching one hand down to wrap around Dean, making him shudder and thrust, forcing a, “Don’t” out of him when it’s too much, when he can’t hold back.

 

“Don’t come,” Jax says, a hard line in his voice doing nothing for Dean’s self-control.  With a wicked, knowing look, Jax wraps a hand around the base of Dean’s cock and squeezes.  “Don’t,” he says again, and Dean nods, breathing out hard as Jax releases him and presses his still slick hand against Dean’s chest for balance.

 

With the other, he reaches behind himself, leans forward onto his bracing hand, pushing the air from Dean, building pressure in his chest, which is fine, since Dean isn’t breathing anyway, too intent on seeing Jax’s fingers busy at their work, sliding in one knuckle at a time, Jax rocking, fucking himself on his own fingers, eyes always open, always on Dean, threat building in his face that this isn’t going to be anything like the other times Dean’s been inside of him.

 

Jax’s fingers leave him with a squelching sound that makes Dean gasp a half-plea he tries to bite off.  Jax hears it just fine, though, smile widening to something feral and absolute.  When he rises to full height on his knees, looming over Dean, Dean has a single moment of total doubt, sure that this will undo him and equally sure that he wants to be undone, unmade, wants to break away and burn up when Jax guides Dean with a confident hand and slides down on him by slow, unhesitant degrees until Dean is seated deep inside and Jax is still, breath-held, face all unguarded need and a love that makes Dean cry out, thrust upward, break the stillness between them.

 

Jax shouts, rides Dean’s erratic bucks, both hands splayed slippery on Dean’s heaving chest, Dean’s heels furrowing the mattress for purchase, pushing up inside Jax like he’d leave a mark that everyone will see and know.  Jax’s head is loose on his neck, all grace abandoned for an open-mouthed, wordless noise that bursts like stars in a negative sky against Dean’s sight.  A tight heat tears open his belly, bends his spine and bursts from him with a hoarse cry that Jax echoes, all rhythm gone in a frantic bob that brings him in a steady, hot stream across Dean’s chest and throat.

 

Dean is soft and wet inside him, Jax a sweaty mess above him, both of them sucking in air like they’ve run a gauntlet of Freaks.  Jax’s head hangs low, hands slipping from Dean’s chest to bracket him beneath his arms, which Dean brings up to wrap around Jax’s back, pressing Jax against him at an awkward angle but wanting to feel him, even the cooling, sticky come that they’ll have to scrape off later.

 

“I love you,” he says in a savage whisper, like a latter day prophet hoarse from being ignored.

 

“God, Dean,” Jax breathes into his ear, raising the hairs on his neck and a shiver that makes him slide from inside Jax, making them both moan.  “I love you.”

 

Dean swallows past the pain of unshed tears trapped in his throat as Jax gingerly dismounts and stands. 

 

“Shower?”

 

Dean trails a lazy hand through the spunk on his belly.  “No.”

 

By Jax’s shuddered breath, Dean wonders if there’ll be another round, thinks maybe he should get some sleep in the meantime.  “Maybe in the morning?”

 

Jax nods.  “I’ll be back in a few.”

 

Dean’s asleep before Jax manages to scare up a clean towel.

 

*****

 

“You sure you don’t want to keep Ope?” 

 

It’s the second time he’s asked, and like the time before, Jax’s answer is a snort of laughter.  “Suck it up,” he adds, shaking his head and tossing the last of the weapons duffels into the back of the newly armored Jeep.  It had delayed their start by six hours—and made the old moose ugly as shit—but it was worth it. 

 

“Tires are a lot harder to hit, radiator and gas tank are covered, door panels, rear hatch,” Bobby’s explaining to Sack, who’s taking the first shift behind the wheel.

 

“What about the glass?”

 

Bobby shakes his head.  “Nothing.  But if you happen to pass the cop shop and there’s anything worth stealing, you might make a pit stop for it.  One of those SWAT vans would be sweet.”

 

It’s a ridiculous dream, but it makes them all smile, which was the point, Dean knows. 

 

Ope is leaning over the roof on the passenger side, Chibs and Juice are in the follow car, a black Escalade to which the crew had added a ramming plate and armored panels that cover the top half of the tires.  A bunch of stragglers had come in on it a few months back, but Jax had commandeered it for the common good and Bobby had done what he could to make it safer.

 

“Things go south, you head up here,” Dean calls, and Juice gives him a smile and thumbs-up from the driver’s seat.”

 

Ope gives him a look and Dean says, “Ready?”

 

“Been,” Ope answers, swinging himself into the passenger seat.  Dean’s got first watch on the roof port.  His P-90 is already in its rack along the inside roof over the passenger doors. 

 

“You sure?” he says again, and he’d deny it if anyone accused him of whining, but it’s probably pretty close.  Though things had thawed between him and Ope in the last eight months since the Scavenger attack, the big guy isn’t exactly warming up to Dean.

 

“It’ll be fine,” Jax assures him, humor thick in his voice.

 

“Glad you find this funny.  If he frags me, it’s gonna be you avenging my death.”

 

Jax’s expression sobers.  “Don’t get dead.”

 

“Yes, your highness,” Dean smirks, opening the driver’s side rear door and climbing in.  Jax leans in the open window.  “You aren’t going to kiss me in front of the other guys, are you?” Dean asks, deliberately loud. “They’ll think we’re gay.”

 

“Just want to make sure Juice knows you’re taken.”

 

It’s a running joke.  None of the Sons is as straight as Juice, but none of them is as pretty, either, and the kid takes their collective flirtation like a champ.

 

“Pretty sure he knew that last night when you woke him up with your screaming,” Ope offers, leering at them over the front seat.  Sack laughs and then coughs to hide it.

 

“You’re just jealous,” Jax starts.

  
Ope interrupts, “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be a soprano.  ‘Oh, Dean,’  ‘Oh, Jax,’” he mimics, voice cracking on the high notes.

 

“Shut up,” Jax says, face red, but he’s smiling, shy and proud, and then he’s there, inches from Dean’s mouth, heat of his breath washing damp against his cheeks.  
  
“Don’t get dead,” Jax says again, voice low, and Dean closes the space between them for a searing kiss that leaves him a little dizzy and a lot hard.  “And don’t jizz on the seats,” Jax adds, ducking back out of the window when Dean swats at him in response.

 

Jax slaps the side of the Jeep twice, Sack starts her up, and they roll out of the yard.  Dean makes a point of not looking back, wanting to remember Jax’s hot tongue in his mouth, his lips pressing hard, leaving a mark of teeth on the soft flesh of his inner lip, not his lover getting smaller as they move away.

 

He’ll see him again soon to renew that kiss and follow it with all the things his dick is still thinking about doing.  Until then, Dean should have his mind on other things anyway.

 

Somehow, though, he doesn’t think Jax will be far from his thoughts.  When did the great Dean Winchester, fearless hunter of demons and everything evil, turn into such a pussy?

 

As if Opie’s read Dean’s mind, he turns to say, “So, you gonna get up on that brace, or do you need some time to cry?”

 

“Fuck you,” Dean says, but he’s blushing and smiling, so he figures that kind of takes away from the effect.

 

Ope’s answering laugh is big and warm, nothing nasty in it, and Dean reconsiders that maybe this trip will be alright after all.

 

“You give blow-jobs by proxy, princess?” Opie adds then, and Dean re-reconsiders.

 

“No way I’m touching that,” Dean answers with a shark-toothed grin.  “I know where it’s been.  And where it’s been would bite mine off if I blew you.”

 

An inscrutable expression crosses Opie’s face as Sack makes a gorking sound trying to swallow a laugh.  Then the big guy starts laughing, a chest-expanding, booming sound that Dean’s never heard from him before.

 

“You’re right there, brother.  Rita is…”

 

“Fierce,” Dean finishes, and he knows his smile is inappropriately knowing, like he’s tapped that himself one time or another, but Ope answers with the same smile and then they’re two guys—three when Sack finally busts out—having a guy moment.

 

It’s not a bad way to start a road trip to Hell-A.

 

*****

 

 _A lot of people talk, but no one says very much.  Everyone has opinions on everything, but no one offers concrete plans.  There’s one voice you should always heed, though, and that’s the one you hear when you stare yourself down in the mirror and get quiet enough to hear it.  Whatever that voice says, it’s the closest you’re going to get to the unblemished truth because we can lie to everybody else, but we can’t lie to ourselves, not while we’re looking—really looking—at ourselves._  (The No-Shit Epistles 44:7-10 [Apocryphal])

 

The sun is setting the sky on fire, like Stockton is burning, when Jax arrives at Chuck’s little house on Woodrow.  There’s a light on in the front window, and he can hear music through the door but not enough to make out the band.

 

The Mamas and the Papas are sharing their California dreams when Chuck answers his knock, but the second verse is interrupted by a woman’s voice from down the hall.

 

“Who’s at the door, babe?”  A second later, Wendy pokes her head around, sees Jax, and ducks her head nervously before putting away her surprise and coming out to greet him.

  
“Hey, Jax,” Chuck says, looking from his girlfriend to his king.  “You know Wendy, right?”

 

Jax smirks and Wendy blushes and then he’s being shown around what used to be the Slawsons’ house.  The new couple has made it their own—a bedsheet-turned-couch-cover brightens the living room, and there are potted plants growing on the deep sill of the front bay window.  There’s an acoustic guitar propped in one corner, a tambourine on a little stool beside it.

 

The kitchen has a table set for three, the stove a pot bubbling with fresh tomato sauce.

 

“Thanks for having me to dinner,” he says, sitting where Wendy indicates and accepting her offer of a beer.

 

“It’s no problem,” Chuck says, eyes moving nervously from Jax to Wendy and back.  “I—we figured it was important.  I mean, not that you need a reason to come visit us.  Our door’s always open to you, you know, and—“

 

“Chuck, relax.  I’m just here to ask a favor.”  For as many times as the slight man has visited the clubhouse and Dean, he’s never gotten comfortable with Jax, and he wonders why that is.  “I’m a guest in your home, that’s all.”

 

Chuck’s throat bobs on a hard swallow but he’s pretty steady when he asks, “What can I do?”  If there’s a little hesitance and a lot of worry in his tone, Jax ignores it in favor of the spaghetti sauce Wendy is spooning over the pasta.

 

“This smells great, Wendy.  You make the sauce yourself?”

 

Her answer segues into a conversation about Bobby’s cooking and the foods they miss from Before and how, exactly, they’re going to use the surplus yield of this year’s surprise bumper crop—Brussels sprouts.

 

Only after dessert, after Wendy has refused Jax’s help doing the dishes and shooed the men out of the kitchen, does he ask Chuck the question he really came to ask.

 

Chuck’s got a picnic table under a big oak in the back yard, and they go out there to sit and nurse an after dinner beer.  It’s quiet in the neighborhood, though a dog’s disturbed barking echoes from across yards a couple of streets over and somewhere a bunch of young kids are giggling crazily.  It makes Jax smile and forget his question for a second.  Then he remembers Sam and the other kids in the hospital, hacking up their lungs, and he’s right back in the present moment.

 

“You have any visions lately, Chuck?”

 

“N-no,” he answers, too quickly, the rehearsals he’d obviously done ruined by the way his voice shakes.

 

“Chuck,” Jax wheedles, mock-stern.

 

“I haven’t, not really.  Just bits and pieces.  More like shrapnel.  I can’t make sense of them.  I didn’t think they were important.  I would’ve reported them if I’d thought they mattered.  Why?  Has something happened?  Oh god, is it Dean?  Is he okay?  Is he hurt?  Can I hel—“

 

“Why’re you asking about Dean, Chuck?  What’ve you seen?”  There’s no mocking in his voice now, only deadly intent.

 

Chuck’s voice shakes on the refrain, “No, I swear, it wasn’t anything big, nothing I could even really name, I just—“

 

“Chuck.”  And now it’s quiet, anger and impatience and frustration and fear.  “Please.”

 

“Okay.  Okay.  Look, it isn’t anything I can explain.  Like I said, it’s fragments—split seconds, snapshots—not even snapshots, undeveloped film with maybe a wisp of an image, like when the person you’re taking the picture of moves out of the frame as you press the button and—“

 

“Chuck!”

 

“Right.  Okay.  So, yeah, visions…”  Chuck trails off, but Jax can see by the light of the pale yellow moon rising over the housetop that the ex-prophet is thinking, trying to put things in order, so he leaves him to it, though it’s hard, the mention of Dean’s name setting off a chain reaction, an icy slush building in his belly.

 

Finally, though, Chuck says, “Okay,” again, and looks at Jax out of the corner of his eyes, like he can’t bear to see him full-on.  “In the fragments, sometimes there’s shouting, a man’s voice, I think, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.  That’s happened maybe three or four times.  Another one is of a crow, I think?  Or a raven?  I can never tell the difference.  I think it’s the beaks.  Do you know?”

 

Jax raises a disbelieving look and Chuck stumbles on.

 

“Anyway, some big black bird.  And then there’s Dean—just his face, actually.  And he’s talking, but there’s no sound, and then—“  Chuck takes a shaking breath and Jax has to curl his fingers into the pulpy wood of the old table top to keep from grabbing the other man and shaking the words out of him.

 

“Then there’s a wash of red over the vision and it goes dark.”

 

“Red?  Like blood?”

 

Chuck shakes his head.  “No.  I don’t know.  Maybe?  It’s not like I get a manual for this stuff, you know!” 

 

It’s so close to Jax’s recent words to Dean, so often something Jax himself feels, that he can’t help but empathize with the guy. 

 

His next words are relenting.  “Look, hey, you did good, Chuck.  That’s good intel.  I can use it.”

  
He can’t, and probably they both know it, but Chuck nods convulsively a couple of times, takes a long tug on the beer, and chokes when it goes down the wrong pipe.

 

A tubercular cough and several hard back slaps later, Chuck is wiping gag-tears from the corner of his eyes and Jax is saying, “Take it easy, man.  It’ll be fine.”

 

“So Dean’s okay?”

 

Jax feels the breath leave him at the irony of Chuck’s question, but he manages a nod and a breathy, “Yeah, yeah he’s fine.  All good,” which Chuck must want to buy because it sounds weak to Jax’s own ears.

 

“I gotta head to the hospital,” Jax says, rising.

  
“Oh, yeah, hey, Wendy told me.  Is Sam—?  Is he gonna be alright?”

 

“We don’t know.  Dean says the kid’s strong, a real fighter.  He’s holding his own.”

 

“Well, tell Dean I said hi and that I hope the kid’s okay.”

 

“I will.”  Jax doesn’t tell Chuck Dean’s on a med run.  No sense worrying the guy.  He’s neurotic enough.  “Hey, tell Wendy I said goodbye, alright?  And thanks for dinner.  It was great.”

 

“Yeah, sure.  Anytime, Jax.  You’re the man!”  Chuck’s nervous laugh follows Jax down the driveway.

 

The hospital is, as expected, depressing.  When the woman at the desk—Janine—won’t let him up to visit Sam, he makes a very pointed suggestion, and her nervous phone call brings Tara to the desk.  She looks like she hasn’t slept in days, her hair coming loose from its usually neat ponytail, eyes heavy-lidded, shadowed.

  
“Can I see him?”

 

She shakes her head, lips thin and bloodless.  “Not a good idea.  Not right now.  We’ve got them all pretty heavily sedated, anyway, so he wouldn’t know you were here.  But…”  She hesitates, obviously not wanting to tell him the next part.

  
“What?”  He imagines the worst, fear making his voice breathy.

  
“We had to put Sam and a couple of the others on respirators.  Their lungs are just too weak for the work the virus is putting them through.”

 

“Shit,” he says, running a hand over his face.  For a second, he’s relieved that Dean’s not here, knowing what it would do to him to hear this.  Then he remembers that Dean’s out there, where a lot worse could happen to him.  Shaking off the fear that tightens his throat, Jax says, “Thanks, Tara,” and touches her arm.

 

She summons up a weak facsimile of a smile.  “I’ll call if there’s any change,” she promises, picking up a chart from the desk and turning back the way she’d come.

 

He’s on his way back to the clubhouse to consult with Bobby about their meeting with Bull Bowmiller they’ve arranged for tomorrow morning when Jax sees a light on in Miriam’s Café window.  It’s well past curfew—lights go out early to conserve energy—so he turns down Main to check it out.

 

Miriam is there behind the counter and seated on a round stool is Jarvis Petry.  They seem deep in talk.  It’s a troubling tableau, not for the least of which reason that Miriam seems to be flirting with the guy, if the color in her cheeks and her mute laughter are any indications.

 

Jax toys with going in, letting them know they’ve been seen, but he thinks better of it, wondering if maybe it’s actually innocent, Miriam working late, baking for the breakfast crowd tomorrow—a Sunday, he realizes with a start (it’s easy to lose track of the days when there isn’t a calendar in existence that reads 2010 or 2011 or 2012)—Jarvis stopping by to court her.

 

Not everything is about Jax, he reminds himself with a self-deprecating snort, walking his bike back from the curb and coasting a few yards before starting it up.  Then, instead of heading back to the clubhouse, he turns out Ward to Juniper and then to the highway that takes him out to the Reservoir.  He won’t pull in, just take a ride down to the access road and turn around, he tells himself.  He’s got too much to do to stop, sit on the bank, watch the moon on the still, dark mirror of the water.

 

He resists the image, the peace it promises, knowing it’s false, that there will be worried snipers in the trees chattering at him by walkie as soon as he shuts off her engine.

 

So he settles for opening his bike up, letting her rip through the silent curtain of the night, for chirping her tires on a tight u-turn and racing back toward town, wind in his teeth, eyes watering, something loosening in his chest as he tries to breathe against the pull of gravity.

  
In the lot at last, the sleek profile of the Impala startles from Jax an involuntary sound when he remembers that Dean’s not inside, followed by the bitter realization that he’d forgotten, that he’d been looking forward to seeing Dean, to crawling into bed with him later.  That’s how used he’s gotten to having Dean around.

  
It should scare the shit out of him, but mostly it makes his breathing a little tighter, makes him have to take a steady, long pull of cool night air.

  
Maybe he needs some weed.  He’s thinking about sneaking up to the roof, breaking into the stash he keeps up there in a coffee can, when the clubhouse door creaks open and Bobby says, “Jax?” though the councilor can clearly see Jax in the security lights mounted around the lot.

  
“Coming,” he answers, suddenly exhausted.   He lets out a stifled sigh and heads for the door Bobby’s holding open for him.

 

He follows Bobby into the rec area, where Piney is still at the bar, throwing back a shot.

“What’s the occasion?” he asks, thinking of the rationing they’ll have to do sooner or later if they want to keep drinking labeled liquor.  There are three stills in the town already churning out blinding rotgut that tastes like jet fuel smells.

 

“Empty nest,” Piney gruffs, taking another shot.

 

Jax raises an eyebrow.  They’ve got at least two sweetbutts and three new patches sleeping somewhere in the building.

 

Bobby just shrugs and gives a rueful half-smile.  “Figured you could use one.”

 

Jax nods, takes a seat at the bar and the offered shot, downs it, feeling it sear its way into his belly, flooding out the cold weight of anxiety that’s been there since Dean left.

 

“You ready for this meeting?”

 

Bowmiller.  Shit.  He’d managed to block it from his mind.

 

Instead of answering directly, Jax guns another shot and lets the glass strike the bar hard as he winces through the afterburn of the whiskey in his nose.

 

“Guy’s an asshole,” Piney growls.  “Don’t know why you’d bother.”

 

“’Cause he might know something about this guy.  Bull was out there a long time before he got to us.  Maybe he heard about the Reverend.”

 

“Yeah, and maybe he’s gonna take your askin’ as a kind of concession, start thinkin’ he deserves more say than he’s already got around here.  Last thing we need’s a goddamned outreach program.”

 

His second week at Deliverance, Bowmiller had sent a duo of white-shirted, bible-toting young men to ask the Sons if they’d found Jesus.

 

As the senior member in the club at the moment, Piney had taken it upon himself to answer for all of them.

 

“Why?  D’ja lose him?  Hell, kid, we already killed the devil and saved the fuckin’ world.  Do we have to do everything for you?  Find him yourself.”

 

Since then, the stubborn preacher had sent two more sets of (bigger, more muscular) evangelists, both pairs of whom had met with an identical reception.  Which is to say, Juice, Chibs, and Sack had removed them from the premises with the judicious display of two wrenches and a crowbar, respectively.

 

“Way I see it,” Bobby says, voice considering, “Bull will be eager to help us.  Figure he’s the big voice right now, but this Reverend gets in, he’s gonna be competing directly with Bull’s bullshit pulpit.  Bowmiller’d be a fool to want that.  These religious nutjobs never see eye to eye on anything.”

 

“Except a common enemy,” Jax adds darkly, giving Bobby a significant look.

  
Piney snorts.  “You can take ‘em, kid.  I have faith in you.”  The latter is weighted with an irony that makes Jax laugh, a weak sound that doesn’t carry past their dim corner of the bar.

“Besides, you’ve got God on your side.”  This remark is absent of Piney’s typical cynicism, and it startles Jax into looking closer at the old man.

  
The skin under his eyes has a greenish cast, his skin sallow.  The omnipresent cannula is crusted, tubing yellowed.

 

Jesus, he’s dying, Jax thinks irrationally, a frisson of fear lancing through him.  Ope’s not here, either.  _Shit._

 

“Relax, kid, it’s not a deathbed conversion.” 

 

“Then—“

 

“It’s pretty clear you’re destined for this, Jax.  Even your dad knew that.  John was a stubborn SOB when he thought he was right, but on this one, I’ve got to give him his due.  He saw somethin’ in you, even way back then.  He knew this was coming, knew you’d be right out at the front of it, too.”

 

It’s the most he’s heard Piney say in at least six months.  And the last rant was about how thin the most recent batch of toilet paper was.  Of course, Jax isn’t around the club much anymore.

 

“Yeah?  I’m not so sure.” 

 

“Don’t have to be.  You just have to lead.  God’ll take care of the faith.”  This from Bobby, who’d found his own path through the post-end darkness in the form of a strange blending of religious ideas.

 

“I think you’ve got that backwards,” Jax observes, blocking his shot-glass with his hand when Bobby gestures like he’d pour another.  He can’t afford to be hung over when they pay their little visit to Bowmiller tomorrow.

 

Today.  _Shit, it’s late_.

 

“No, I don’t.  The way I figure it, God’s got to keep believing in us for us to keep existing, right?  But he’s not going to disappear if we stop believing in him.  So all you’ve gotta do is keep on keepin’ on, brother.”

 

“Interesting,” Jax says, nodding.  Crazy, too, he thinks, but he keeps that to himself.  Bobby’s gotten a little strange since the End, but he’s harmless, and it’s not like Jax would begrudge the guy his comfort. 

 

“I’m hittin’ the sack.”

 

“You want company?”

 

Jax turns and gives Piney a look from the far end of the bar.  “You offerin’?  Sure your heart can take it?”

 

“I would, sweetheart,” Piney shoots back, “But it’d probably kill you tryin’ to keep up with me, and then we’d all be fucked.”

 

They share a big laugh at that, something clearing from the air around them all.

 

“Koosh is in the back, said she’d wait up in case you wanted anything.”

Jax groans.  Their newest sweetbutt is a big-eyed, small-chested twenty-two year old with legs like a runway model and a mouth like a sewer grate.  He likes her, but he’s not even a little tempted.  For one thing, he’s exhausted. 

 

For another, he’s totally whipped.  Jax lets the thought show on his face, and the two older men get a good snort out of it.

 

“Go on, I’ll take her off your hands,” Bobby says when he can talk without snorting whiskey out his nose.

 

“You’re a martyr,” Jax answers dryly.  “Thanks, man.”

 

“Well, we all gotta take one for the team now and then.”

 

Jax answers with a wave over his shoulder, heads for his room as quietly as he can, cracking the door open enough to let a little light in and make sure there’s no one already in his bed.  Once inside, he undresses in the dark, stumbles over clothes to get to the bed, only when he puts his hand down remembering that they’d spooged all over the last of the clean sheets.

  
“Shit,” he whispers.  Then he settles for pulling the loose sheet over the bottom one and lying on top of it.  He sits down to take his boots off and almost falls asleep like that, one boot still in his hand, and when he’s at last able to surrender to gravity, he doesn’t even last to feel the pillow under his head.

 

In the dream, Dean is driving into him from behind.  He’s braced against the headboard, his arms straining to keep from being shoved into it, and with every thrust, the headboard strikes the wall.  Thud!  The sound amps up his excitement, makes his cock jump and leak, and he’s whining with lack of contact, saying, “Fuck, Dean, help me out.  Dean!” Thud!  He’s close, so close, and Dean’s striking the spot every time now, lighting him up until he can’t breathe for it, and he can feel his orgasm building as Dean’s thrusts break pattern and grow frantic.

 

Thud!  Thud!  Thud!

 

“Jax,” he hears, Dean’s voice hoarse, cracking. “Jax!”  And it’s turned urgent, like a warning.  Jax cranes his neck around to see Dean wide-eyed, face dripping blood, hands and chest coated with it, mouth open on a soundless cry, still seated inside him.

  
“Jax!”

 

He’s half out of bed, pawing frantically at the sheets wrapped around his legs, trying to find the blood when he realizes it was a dream, the thudding Bobby’s fist on the door.

  
“Let’s go, sunshine.  Breakfast in three.”

 

Jax groans, levers himself tiredly out of the bed, rubs his face and searches for a towel that doesn’t have a suspicious stain, settling at last for one that’s mostly clean.

 

He takes a lightning shower, not bothering to wash his hair, and heads for the rec room with it soaking the back of his Sons shirt.  He’s got his cut in one hand, and he’s stowing his gun in his rear waistband with the other.

  
“You plannin’ to shoot Bowmiller?”  Bobby asks it like he doesn’t think it’s a bad idea.

“I wish.  Just figure it’s good to have insurance.”

 

That stops the councilor, who’s in the middle of buttering toast.  “Something goin’ on you’re not tellin’ me, Jax?”

 

Jax shrugs into his cut, snags a cup of black coffee already waiting for him on the bar.  “Just the usual political bullshit, Bobby.  Nothin’ we can’t handle.”

 

Bobby makes a noncommittal noise and finishes filling a plate with eggs and toast.

  
“No bacon?”

 

“Jeff says the pigs are a little late for the slaughter this year.  He wants to fatten ‘em up a little more.  Better bacon.”

 

Jax makes an affirmative noise around a mouthful of eggs.  “Good,” he says after he’s washed it down with coffee.  “This is good, too,” he says, staring at his cup with some surprise.  It’s been awhile since they’ve had anything but Folgers three years past its expiration date.

 

“Ginny’s had some success with her coffee beans.”

 

Jax smiles, wide and genuine.  “Might have to pay that girl a special visit.”

 

Bobby laughs.  “Get in line.  Juice has been there a lot lately.  That’s why you got first roast of the new crop.”

 

“I’ll leave it to him, then.”

 

“You best.  I ain’t mediating your divorce if Dean finds out.”

 

Jax laughs again, feeling easy despite the unpleasant chore ahead.  “It’s quiet,” he says after the echo of his laugh fades from the far wall of the big, empty room.

 

“Sweetbutts are sleepin’ in. Had a rough night.”  Bobby leers appreciatively for his part in it.  “I sent Gordie and Lewis on a juice run.  Gyp took some stuff over to Rita and Ope’s.”  The three new patches have been working out so far. 

 

Short on numbers, the Sons had had to modify their usual initiation process, taking experienced but unaffiliated bikers and patching them on with a kind of probationary system that combined some of the tasks of the old Prospect rocker but gave them more responsibilities, too. 

 

“Rita pissed?”

 

A veteran of the End, the war with the Scavengers, all of it, Rita still didn’t appreciate it when Ope had to leave the safety of Charming.  Of course, some of that had to do with Emily, Ope’s only surviving child, who was twelve going on twenty and a total terror.  It was tough being a tween in the post-apocalypse.  For one thing, there were no malls, no Miley Cyrus, no cell reception.

 

Okay, so maybe that second thing wasn’t so bad.

 

“I’ll swing by later, see if she wants some relief.”

 

Bobby smirks.  “You’re going to babysit Emily?  Better take the .45.”

 

“Ha-ha.”  He finishes his coffee, chases the last bit of egg around his plate, then buses the table, leaving the dishes in the sink behind the bar.  “Let’s go.”

 

The former Deliverance Baptist, now Deliverance from God’s Fiery Wrath Church—not exactly a business-card-friendly improvement—is only ten minutes from the clubhouse, situated on a block that runs behind St. Thomas’ but further south, where the houses get smaller, the lawns browner, with yards like postage stamps and listing metal mailboxes at the curb, no sidewalks.

 

The church has a fresh coat of paint though and a hand-painted sign.  A few late flowers bloom in red clay pots on either side of the gravel driveway.

 

Already, people are walking up the road toward the church for the 9:00 service, women in dresses and plain sweaters, men in ill-fitting suits, necks fresh-washed and red from rough shaving trapped in collars that chafe.

 

Jax swaggers off the bike and toward the church’s open front doors, feeling eyes boring into his back, hearing Bobby’s labored breathing just to his left.

 

The Reverend Benjamin “Bull” Bowmiller is at the pulpit fussing with something under a reading light but stops when he sees them enter. 

 

The inside of the church is simple—white-washed walls, polished pine pews, a plain cross hung on the wall behind an unadorned altar, not even a cloth to cover the worn wood that gleams dully in the light of the sun coming in the clear glass windows on either side of it.

 

He’s a big man, broad across the shoulders, barrel-chested, hard belly running to fat, eyes rheumy and recessed in sunken sockets.  He has the complexion of a share-cropper, the gait of a cowhand, and a firm handshake just this side of impolite.

 

“What can I do for the Sons?” he asks, managing to insinuate with that one word a relationship Jax has never had with the Lord.

 

“We have a few questions for you concerning Reverend Rounder,” Jax begins, but Bowmiller holds up a hand to stop him.

 

“I have only a few minutes before I have to prepare for my service.  Perhaps you’d sit a spell, listen to my sermon, and then join me for brunch?”

 

“No thanks,” Jax answers at once, refusing to let the man get control of the conversation.  “We’ve eaten. This shouldn’t take much time, and I don’t suppose you’d like us here for the service.”  His threat is general but implicit, and he sees the other man’s mouth thin a little with anger.

  
 _Gotcha_ , he thinks.

 

“Very well.  The hall is a more appropriate place for this conversation, I’d expect.  Through here.”

 

He leads them down a short corridor to a long, low-ceilinged room filled with unmatched dining sets of various shapes and sizes, a giant coffee urn sputtering in one corner, trays of covered pastries on the table beside it.  A woman looks up from where she’d been laying out napkins, says, “Oh,” hand fluttering near her mouth.

  
Bowmiller dismisses her with a gesture and she hesitates her way out a side door, leaving an afterimage of her indefinite figure where the morning sun had burned it onto Jax’s retinas.

 

The pastor doesn’t ask them to sit, but Jax brushes past him and pulls out a chair, turning it around to straddle it, feet wide, arms crossed casually over the seat back.

 

Bobby follows Jax’s lead, lowering himself with a huff into another chair.

 

Bowmiller could stand there looking like an asswipe, or he could pull out a chair for himself and sit down.  Expression static, he does the latter, giving Jax an inscrutable, assessing look.

 

Jax is pretty sure the big man doesn’t like what he sees.  Jax smirks.  That’ll help.

 

“So you got a history with this Rounder guy?”

 

“Not precisely.” 

 

“Want to be a little clearer?”

 

“Rumors and nonsense, mostly, but there were one or two lost souls who said they’d seen him, that he preached the true Word.”

 

Jax raises an eyebrow, indicating that the pastor should continue.

 

“They said he claimed to be the Voice of God.  Blasphemy, obviously.  Heresy, too, most likely.  On that point, the Scriptures can be…difficult to interpret.  Either way, the man’s no prophet.”

 

Jax waits for more, and when nothing comes, he raises his hands out in front of him, as if suggesting that the other man owes him more, and if he doesn’t deliver, the consequences are out of Jax’s hands to control.

 

“He’s a deluded fool,” Bowmiller continues at last, lips pursing in a disconcertingly prissy way for such a large man.  “He’ll come to no good.”

 

“But will he pass the Test?” Bobby asks.

 

Bowmiller takes on a considering look, eyes at half mast, and then nods a little, as if to himself.  “Maybe.  Maybe not.  Sometimes the strength of a fool’s faith will defend him from destruction.”

 

“But you don’t think he’s actually a man of God?”

 

The pastor’s smile is darker than Jax expects, like his mask has slipped.  “What I think doesn’t matter, Mr. Teller.  If God judges him worthy, the Reverend is coming in, and many of his following with him, I’d bet.  You’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

 

Jax doesn’t imagine the man’s glee at his speculation.

 

Anger makes his next words sharp, “And what do you get out of it?  The Rev’ll be your direct competition.  Only so many souls need saving in Charming.”

 

Bowmiller smirks, oily and unsettling.  “I hardly need to worry about a man like that.  I know I’m chosen of God.  It’s you who should be worried, Mr. Teller.  Your own…vocation…seems a bit unclear.”

 

Jax doesn’t bite, just lets his own smile speak for him, of violence and the potential for it, of power and what he wields.  Bobby rises before Jax does, steps up to the still seated pastor, and says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  Matthew seven, chapter fifteen.”

 

“A Jew quoting Scripture,” Bowmiller sneers, rising from his seat and looming over Bobby, who doesn’t step back.  “’Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me.’  John 18:35.”

 

Bobby laughs.  “You put yourself in Pilate’s place?”

 

If he’s surprised that Bobby knows the verse, Bowmiller doesn’t show it.  “We’re all sinners who condemned Jesus Christ to suffering and death.”

 

“Yeah, but not all of us are hypocrites,” he notes, taking a step back, Jax rising and falling in beside him.

 

“You’ll find there’s precious little difference between us once Judgement comes.”

 

Jax laughs.  “Judgement’s come and gone, and we’re still standing.”

 

“The righteous must always be tested by the wicked.”

 

Jax gives Bobby a look, but the other man just shrugs with both hands, as if to say, “I have no fucking idea.”

 

“That’s the gospel according to Bull,” Bowmiller explains smugly.  “I trust you gentlemen can find your own way out.” He points to the side door the mousy woman had scuttled through earlier.

 

“Sure,” Jax answers, ignoring the pastor and moving back down the corridor, out onto the altar dais, and then down through the center aisle of the packed church.  People’s murmurs deaden into a thick silence, their bootfalls like war drums on the wooden floor, hollow and promising some deadly peril.

 

As they reach the exterior doors, Jax hears the Reverend begin his service. 

 

“Brothers and sisters, the readings for this day are from Revelation,” he begins.  The rest is muffled to a drone when the doors close behind them.

 

“So what did you think?” Jax asks Bobby as a latecomer scurries past them into the church.

 

“I think he’s an asshole,” Bobby answers.  “But better the devil you know…”

 

“Yeah,” Jax agrees, heading down the walk toward their bikes.  “We might have to let the Reverend Rounder have his test.”

 

Bobby nods, face grim.  “And if he passes—“

 

“We’re screwed,” Jax answers. 

 

“Guess we should hold it off as long as we can.”

 

Jax doesn’t answer, just kicks up the stand and backs her away from the curb, straightening her out and starting her up.  At the corner where they’d usually turn to go back to the clubhouse, Jax indicates he’s peeling off.  Bobby waves and roars away, but Jax stays there idling at the stop sign until one of Blue’s patrol trucks slides up at the opposite corner.  Then, Jax sketches a wave to the guys in the back of the truck and turns his bike toward the club after all.

 

His sigh is lost even to his own ears.

 

*****

 

 _That old cliché about living every day like it’s your last is only true when death is a close, personal friend.  Otherwise, people forget.  They shop.  They screw.  They drink themselves blind.  And speaking as someone who’s lived on the edge of death—and over it—a lot, I have to say, they’re on to something.  If you can help it, live like you’ve got every day ahead of you that you had behind.  No point regretting what you can’t change anyway._ (The No-Shit Epistles 43:14-21 [Apocryphal])

 

Juice pisses like a fucking racehorse. 

 

This is not Dean’s first observation of that fact.  Not even the first time he’s been standing at a tree adjacent to Juice’s target and doing the same thing.

 

But it might be the first time it’s ever been quiet enough to hear it.

 

There aren’t any birds along this part of 5, and Dean’s pretty sure that’s weird, though he’s no ornithologist, and anyway, at least there’s no birdshit to clear from the windshield.  Not like in Modesto that one time, when—

 

“You airin’ it out or are you gonna zip up so we can hit the road?”

 

Ope’s voice breaks Dean’s train of thought, which was on a switch-rail heading for a broken trestle anyway, so it’s all good.

 

“No birds,” he answers, heeding Ope’s prompt and stowing it.

 

“What?”  Ope looks at his hand like he might have given Dean the finger without realizing it.

  
“There aren’t any birds. None.  It’s completely quiet.”

 

Chibs and Juice, who’ve just joined them, look around while Ope furrows his brow like he can summon super-human hearing.  Sack’s already back in the Jeep, rummaging around between the seats for something and generally enjoying himself, his expression happy, like a puppy that’s been let off his leash in a particularly interesting park.

 

“Seems strange for a recreational area ‘s all,” Dean notes, heading for the driver’s seat.  Ope’s got roof mount this time, Sack shotgun.  Juice and Chibs return to the Escalade and they start their engines.  The noise is wince-inducing in the unnatural stillness of the place.

 

They roll out without incident, passing the “Thank you for not littering” sign as they leave Hungry Valley.  Dean can’t help but watch the sky nervously, remembering his run-in with dragons in Boise.

 

Nothing happens, though, and he lets out a shaky laugh, half at himself, half out of relief. 

 

“Guess I’m just paran—“ he gets out before Ope is shouting, “Holy shit!” and the deafening thunder of the P-90 on full automatic opens up directly overhead.

 

Sack is out of his belt and halfway out of the window, craning to see what Ope’s shooting at, when Dean sees it—an enormous black shadow filling the windshield with inky darkness.

 

“Jesus, what is it?” Sack says, sliding back into his seat to throw himself around and grab the riot gun from the floor in the backseat.  They ride jacked when they ride at all these days.

Dean can’t watch what Sack is doing; he’s too busy figuring trajectory and trying to decide whether he should stay the course or try to get out of its way.  Ope’s unsecured, braced against a metal seat built for the purpose of a running charge, but if Dean flips the Jeep, Ope’s dead for sure, Sack, too, the way he’s hanging out the window, big bore shotgun adding its throaty roar to the staccato symphony coming from above.

 

He’s still trying to figure out what’s coming at them, cataloguing even as he considers the shoulder, looks for turn-offs, anything but this straight path to sure collision—too small for a dragon, too big for an inferno of imps, too slow for a horde of disembodied demons.

 

“Shit!” he shouts as the shape shatters into shrapnel of black wings arrowing around them, Ope cursing and sliding back inside, Sack throwing himself practically into Dean’s lap to avoid the screeching ravens that dive-bomb them, black beaks gaping, hooked talons like nails on a blackboard as they rake the top of the Jeep and dart toward the windows like they’ll fly right inside.

 

A mass of a dozen or more black bodies sacrifice themselves against the windshield in an explosion of blood and black feathers, and Dean is driving blind, swearing viciously as the wipers stutter and jam, useless against the weight of the mangled remains.  Hands tight on the wheel, eyes staring unblinking through the muck to make out the road, Dean is startled by Ope’s cry from right behind him, and then there’s a deafening boom, a flash of heat on his cheek, and then a rain of hot fluid bathing the back of his head, his neck, soaking into his collar, even as a flurry of black feathers fall around him and his ears start a deep, deafened throbbing.

  
He can’t hear a word Sack is screaming at him, can’t see a fucking thing, can only feel the front right tire as it catches the edge of the gravel shoulder, then the rear wheel as it tips off the road.  He wrenches the wheel, over-corrects, feels the Jeep rock and hesitate on the point of tipping for an impossible space of seconds before she’s got all four wheels on the road again and he thinks they’re more or less straightened out.

  
Then he eases off the gas and prays there aren’t any wrecks in the road ahead of them because he can’t see a fucking thing and his head is killing him from the concussion of the gun right next to his ears inside the small space of the Jeep’s cab.

 

Sack is still talking to him, but Dean hears only a strange humming, like there’s a badly tuned radio playing in a motel room three doors down.

 

He gestures to his ears, says, “I can’t hear you,” in what might be a too-loud voice, and then puts the Jeep in park, shuts her off, and stumbles out of the driver’s seat to bend over, brace his hands against his knees, and take a few deep breaths to keep from hurling.

 

The world is swooping and spinning, like it gets after a seven-shot celebration, except this time he hasn’t done anything fun to deserve the sickening vertigo.

 

He waits it out, eyes closed, feels a brief hand on his lower back and manages to wave off whoever it is offering help or asking if he’s okay.

 

When he thinks he can stand without listing, Dean opens his eyes and tries it—slowly.  The world manages to stay more or less steady on its axis, and he takes in the worried faces of Chibs and Juice.  He sees Sack ahead of the Jeep, Ope behind the Escalade, guns trained at a midpoint in the empty blue sky.

 

“I’m fine,” he grouses.  “Just a little temporary deafness.  Nothing to worry about.”  He thinks he keeps to an inside voice, but he can’t be sure.  Even as he reassures them, though, a wave of nausea rises up his gut and tries to push its way out of his throat.  He swallows hard and concentrates on breathing through it.

 

Aside from the cotton batting in his ears, a killer headache, and the nausea, Dean seems to be okay.  He resists the urge to touch his temples for the ache ratcheting up behind his eyes.  No sense giving the guys anything else to worry about.  He’ll be fine in a few hours. 

 

He walks more or less steadily to the Jeep, opens the hatch in the back, and digs around until he comes up with the first aid kit, from which he gets four ibuprofen, washing them down with a bottle of water from the cooler nearby.

 

Drinking water’s too precious to waste on a road trip, but he has to clean off what he can of the sticky raven’s blood coating the back of his head and neck. Dean uses an old towel for that, but gets an alcohol swab from the kit to clean the abrasion on his cheek—powder burn, he realizes, sniffing sulfur even over the nose-stinging strength of the antiseptic.  No wonder he’s deaf.

 

Closing the hatch, he walks around to the front of the Jeep, where Juice is holding a wad of oil rags and staring uncertainly at the mess on the windshield.

 

Sensing movement, Dean whirls, only to find Chibs standing there, shit-eating grin on his face, bottle of windshield washer fluid in one hand, more rags in the other. 

 

Chibs says something to him with exaggerated care, but Dean can’t understand the guy half the time even when he _can_ hear him.  Watching his lips move tells Dean nothing.

 

At last, with an exasperated gesture, Chibs indicates that Dean should take it easy. 

  
Right.

 

Instead, he grabs a sawed-off from the backseat of the Jeep and takes up a position halfway between the two vehicles. 

 

By the time the guys are done clearing the Jeep’s windshield, Dean’s headache has receded to a dull throbbing in time with his heartbeat and his hearing is starting to recover, though Ope’s deliberately noisy approach on the gravel shoulder behind Dean sounds like a kid eating Rice Krispies with his mouth open.

 

Still, he appreciates the effort the guy makes not to startle him.  Of course, that might have less to do with Ope liking Dean and more to do with the shotgun he’s holding, but whatever.

 

He feels isolated and strange climbing back in the Jeep—passenger seat this time.  He couldn’t hear a thing of the hurried conference the other four had had, could only guess from circumstances that they were deciding where to stop for the night.  It’d be dark in an hour or two, and they aren’t going to attempt greater L.A. metro in the dark.

 

As far as they know, there’s no sanctuary, no church they can use as holy ground, so they’re going to have to make do with an easily defensible location.  If they can get through Santa Clarita, there’s a park just north of San Fernando that should offer them a reasonable degree of cover for the night.

 

They make it without further incident, a bullet-riddled brown-and-green sign announcing that they’re entering the Michael D. Antonovich Open Space, but to Dean, it doesn’t seem all that open.  Rugged, wooded hills rise to either side of the highway.  The highway affords no easy access to the heights, so they take an exit, coasting in the growing shadows of sunset until they come to a widening of the shoulder that indicates a trailhead. 

 

A rusting metal garbage can with faded lettering warns them that the park is “Pack in, Pack out.”  They do as they’re told, shouldering duffels and slinging weapons across their chests, loading light packs with enough food and water for the night. 

 

Dean worries about leaving their vehicles so exposed like this and then reasons that if someone—or something—comes along that can do the Jeep and Escalade any harm, they’ll have bigger problems than a loss of transportation.

 

Still, his eyes linger on the long blue shadow of the road where it stretches around a bend just ahead, something ominous in the broken sight-line, and he has to hide a shiver as he heads up the trail behind Juice.

 

Usually, he’d appreciate the view, since Juice’s ass is, like the rest of him, a thing of beauty.  But he’s distracted by the way the blood rushes through his ears, by the way his own footfalls sound like his feet are a mile away from him, by the sensation that he’s missing an essential survival element.

 

 _Stop being such a pussy_ , he tells himself after the third time a movement out of the corner of his eye startles him into raising his .45, which he’s gripping tightly in his right hand.  Once it’s a wood grouse startled up out of the undergrowth.  Twice it’s a chipmunk, probably chittering angrily as it dives for better cover.  Each time, Dean’s face burns with embarrassment and he purposely avoids looking at the others.

 

By the time they get to a narrow clearing hemmed in by looming gray boulders, Dean’s panting as much from the steep climb as from the constant sense that he’s missing something just out of his immediate sight.  He hates it, hates the sense that he’s handicapped, that he can’t possibly keep watch for the night or join in the plans for tomorrow’s perilous second leg.

 

 _Pussy_ , he repeats to himself, gathering wood and piling it beside a fire pit they’ve dug into a place where the earth has eroded away from the base of a big rock, leaving a shallow cave perfect for hiding the light of their fire.

 

The clearing is surrounded by black walnuts, ash, and maple trees.  There’s a steep descent to the east and clear sightlines down the trail they’d just climbed.  To the west, the mountain rises beyond the rocks, the only point of egress a beaten path between two sentinel stones. 

 

Ope indicates that one watch will take the top of the second sentinel, another will cover the trail they’d come up from the top of a boxcar-sized boulder with a flat surface perfect for a sniper’s nest.  Three shifts, he indicates with hand signals, watching Dean’s face to make sure he’s getting it.  Four hours each.

 

Dean nods, says, “I’ll take the last shift.  My hearing should be clear by then.”  The looks they give him are obscured by the growing dark, but Dean’s pretty sure no one is buying his assurance. 

 

Ope shakes his head, says, “No,” clearly enough that Dean makes it out even though he hears only a blurred, deep drum-beat.

Dean gives him a hard look.

  
“No,” he says again, and then fixes his eyes at a point over Dean’s right shoulder.

  
Dean turns to find Chibs standing there with a shotgun cocked and pointed at him.

 

Dean didn’t even know the guy had moved, much less heard him sneak up or rack the shell.

 

Shit.

 

Ceding defeat, Dean nods and walks away, ostensibly to collect more wood.  Really, he just needs to be out from under all those concerned, understanding looks.  Fuck, but he hates being coddled.

 

Despite not being able to hear the words, Dean finds their dinner conversation strangely soothing.  The steady murmur of low voices is like a gentle hum that fills his head, blocking the maddening regularity of his heartbeat, the only thing he can hear clearly.

 

Sack had thrown together some mac and cheese while Dean had roasted sausage over the fire, and they’d wolfed down the food while it was still hot, the cheese sticking to the roofs of their mouths, the sausage burning their tongues.

  
They’d smiled and joked around, hungry and happy to be sharing a meal, even if they were washing down the food with lukewarm water that tasted faintly of plastic instead of cold beer and warm Jack.

 

After the meal, they’d each scoured their own dishes with ash and sandy soil, stowed them, and laid out their bedrolls for the night.

 

Juice, Sack, and Chibs were going to take first watch, Juice on the high rock, Sack facing the down-mountain trail, Chibs responsible for keeping a low fire burning and for waking the others at any sign of trouble.

 

Dean and Ope had hit the sack then despite the relatively early hour.  They’d be up at first light and on the road, hoping to make good time to their ultimate destination, and they had to get whatever rest they could because tomorrow was going to be a motherfucker.

 

Between them and Cedars Sinai were some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in L.A.  Or rather, they had been densely populated, back when there were still people.

 

Now, they have to hope that, as with a lot of other places they’d heard of from survivors, the vast majority of the people in L.A. had died bloody in the early days of the end, and another large mass had been turned into the infected undead, most of which had died when Lucifer fell.

 

Of course, the mutant super-Freaks who had survived the end of the End were also most likely to be found in big cities, too. 

 

It doesn’t matter, though, Dean reminds himself.  Sam and the other kids need medicine, and the best place for finding that is Cedars Sinai.  Whatever they might find in L.A., they’ll have to take their chances for the kids.  They’re worth the risk.

 

Dean doesn’t think he’s going to sleep—too much to think about.  Every alarming thought and unpleasant possibility kicks his heartbeat up, and the rushing of blood in his ears is almost maddening, like being trapped in the belly of some gigantic, panting beast.

 

Still, he closes his eyes, concentrates on clearing his head, calming his breathing.  Maybe he won’t sleep, but he can at least get some rest.  He spends a little time thinking of Jax, but that only leads to an increased heart-rate, too, and he abandons the fantasy in favor of breaking down the Impala’s engine one piece at a time. 

 

Mentally rehearsing the happily tedious task lulls Dean despite the darkness and the thundering of blood in his ears and the next time he’s aware of anything in the waking world, it’s an insistent whine that sends an icy blade of fear through him just before a hand clamps over his mouth and he’s thrashing upward, knife coming free of the pillow just before he’s wrapped around from behind in a crushing hug.

 

He struggles, throwing his head back to try to butt his captor, but he doesn’t have a good angle, and his legs are tangled in the bedroll.  He can’t get purchase on the slick satin of the bag, and he curses wildly under the muffling hand, using his weight to no avail, waiting for the killing blow and thinking, _Stupid, should have known, stupid…_

 

“Dean,” he thinks he hears, and he wonders if it’s Sam, waiting for him on the other side.

 

“Dean.”  Distant, far enough away to be heaven, maybe.  All at once, he stops fighting, lets his body go lax in the hard grip of whatever has him.

 

He feels it relax and makes one last herculean effort, driving the crown of his head into flesh with a satisfying impact, feeling some give in the restricting arms, using it to get free, to get up and turn around, feet planted, hands up, ready to go down swinging if he has to go down.

 

Opie is on his ass at the head of Dean’s bedroll, blood threading down his chin from a split lip.  He’s staring murderously at Dean, and Dean realizes two things at once:  There’s enough light out for him to see Opie’s furious expression.  And the other three Sons are all standing around him, hands up in a placating way, as if he’s a panicked bull to be herded into a corner.

 

“What?” he says, surprised to hear his voice, still muffled but clear enough.  “What happened?”

 

“You were…screaming.”  He can hear the way Juice hesitates on the word even though his hearing is still muted, and he knows it must’ve been bad.  He can’t remember a thing about the dream. 

 

He runs a shaking hand over his face and then reaches down to offer it to Ope, saying, “I’m sorry, man,” as he does so.  Ope takes in Dean’s face, the proffered hand, and for a long span of seconds, Dean thinks they’re going to have a problem here.  Then Ope is gripping his hand, letting himself be levered onto his feet, wiping his chin clean with his shirt sleeve.

 

“No problem,” Ope says at last, though it’s a little slurred.  “Nice reflexes,” he adds with a rueful glance at his stained shirt.

 

“There’s breakfast,” Sack offers, a little nervous, giving Dean sidelong looks as Dean passes him, heading for the up-mountain trail.

  
“Where you going?” he hears, as if from a long way off. 

He doesn’t answer, just stoops in passing the communal pack to retrieve a roll of toilet paper and wave it on two fingers over his shoulder.

 

“Don’t fall off the mountain,” Chibs calls.  Dean waves only one finger this time.

 

When he comes back, he finds instant coffee in an enamel cup waiting on a rock beside a granola bar and a bruised apple.  “Thanks,” he says to Sack, who’s busy stowing his own bedroll.

  
Dean drinks the coffee quickly, grimacing at its bitterness, and eats the meager breakfast while stowing his own gear.  In ten minutes, they’re packed and ready to head back to the vehicles.

  
It’s a beautiful morning, the sky cloudless and blue through a canopy of dappled leaves.  With the benefit of early, diffuse light and half of his hearing, he finds the hike out a hell of a lot better than the hike in, and despite the dangers they’re about to face, he feels pretty good when they reach the trailhead and find the Jeep and Escalade just as they’d left them, no signs of any visitors in the night.

 

“Nice spot,” he remarks to Ope as they stow their gear in the back of the Jeep.  “Maybe we should suggest a camping trip sometime.”

 

Ope snorts and shakes his head, heading for the passenger seat.  By mutual but unspoken agreement, Dean always gets to drive when they’re headed into trouble.  Ope mans the roof gun again, Sack brings an AK-47 up from the back, and Dean sees in the sideview that Chibs is likewise armed in the passenger seat of the Escalade.

 

Juice gives him a thumbs-up, and they move out, heading back to the freeway, turning south towards San Fernando and whatever the day will bring.

 

Dean turns on the radio and shoves in a tape that he’d put in yesterday.  No one had been much in the mood for music then, but now it seems appropriate.  With a grin, he cranks the volume as the first driving beats of _Highway to Hell_ rattle the windows.  Ope pounds on the roof, but Dean just shouts, “Driver picks the music,” and cranks it higher still.

 

In a few miles, they’ll have to be as quiet and cautious as they can, but for right now, it’s a beautiful day on the wide open road and they’re eating up the miles, no stop signs or speed limits, just like the man says.

 

*****

 

 _There are limits to what any man can take, but when you get people in a group, those limits shift.  For a good cause, they can be miraculous, for a bad—treacherous.  The key to controlling a mob is to shift them to a common cause that gives them the most while demanding the least.  For this, a leader needs charisma, courage, and a little bit of crazy.  Otherwise, the failure of the effort will be more destructive, ultimately, than if he hadn’t tried at all._ (The No-Shit Epistles 44:1-5 [Apocryphal])

 

The traditional clubhouse dinner is Wednesday night, but Sunday afternoons usually find a big group of Sons and sweetbutts gathered around the tables in the central room, eating, drinking, shooting the shit.  They’re down by five members, though, and the room seems to echo strangely with the spaces those men leave.  Even with Bobby, Piney, the new patches, J.C., Kerry, and Koosh making plenty of noise, it feels off to Jax, who works through his meal without tasting it and heads back to his room.

 

A timid knock at the door a few minutes later tells him before he says, “Yeah,” who it is.

 

Koosh pushes the door open only far enough to poke her head in.

 

“What?” he says, and it’s not a friendly demand.

 

“I—“ she stammers, blushing, unable to look him in the eye.

 

“Koosh, go away,” he answers, this time inflecting it with a little kindness.  “I’m not in the market for a bedwarmer.”

 

“That’s—“ she starts again, stalling when she peeks at his expression.  Jax imagines it isn’t very welcoming.  He doesn’t help her out, refuses to feel like a dick as she struggles.  If she can’t be thicker skinned than this, she doesn’t belong with the Sons.

 

“I didn’t come here for that.  There’s a call for you.  From the hospital.  Dr. Keppler.”

 

Don Keppler, retired Colonel from the U.S. Navy, is the chief medical officer at St. Thomas.  Jax is brushing past her out the door before she can get out of the way. 

 

“Don, what’s up?” he asks when he picks up the old-school black receiver on the rotary phone they keep behind the bar.  The local land lines had been put in working order when the cell phones had stopped working years ago.  The Sons and Charming’s Army communicate by walkie, but most of the civilians have access to hard-wired phones.

 

“I think you’d better come down here,” Don answers without preface.  “There’s a situation.”

 

 _Shit._   “Do I need backup?”  He knows the combat veteran will understand the euphemism.

 

“No.  Just get here.” 

 

The line goes dead before Jax says, “Be there in three.”

 

“Bobby!” he calls, heading for the door at a fast walk.  “I’m going to St. Thomas’.  Put Blue on alert that we might need a few guys.”

 

The Army does most of the work of protecting the town from outside forces, but now and they have more domestic duties.  For most law enforcement within the town limits, though, they rely on Hale and civil deputies he’d trained himself when Chief Unser had died shortly after shit had started getting ugly.

 

Hale’s problematic, though, always pushing for greater civil latitude, and the last thing Jax needs right now is a pissing match in public.  He needs to know what’s happening at the hospital, and he can’t worry about politics.

 

He spends the short ride to St. Thomas worrying about Sam, wondering if something’s happened, if the kids have died, a thought that makes his dinner swim uneasily in his stomach.  As soon as he pulls onto the loop drive of the hospital, though, Jax knows it’s not about the kids’ conditions.  At least, not entirely.

  
There’s a group of citizens milling around the main entrance, some in clumps, others alone, all of them by their body language and expressions clearly upset.

 

 _Shit_ , he thinks again, killing the engine and rolling up onto the sidewalk to park her out of the way of traffic.

 

On closer inspection, he recognizes a few faces, among them Jarvis Petry, Miriam from the café, and Grady.  The old hunter’s presence surprises him the most, since he’s always been a firm ally of the Sons because of his connection to Dean.

 

“Grady, what’s going on?” he asks, pretending not to see Petry opening his mouth to speak.

  
“I came to visit Autumn Ellery,” Grady explains, naming one of Martin Ellery’s three kids.  Ellery was chief farmer in charge of not only his own big family spread but a consortium of Farms that provided the bulk of Charming’s food.  Grady, as Agricultural Liaison, had grown pretty close with the Ellerys, Jax knew.

 

“Oh, no.  I hadn’t heard she was sick.  Is it—?”

 

Grady nods, confirming Jax’s fear without him having to voice it. “Brought her in myself this morning.  Martin’s in the middle of the last grain harvest.  He’s worried sick, but if he doesn’t get the wheat in…”  Jax doesn’t need the old man to finish the sentence. 

 

“What are you doing about the outbreak?” Petry interrupts.

 

“Is it true you’re going to quarantine all the town’s children?” a woman asks, voice quavering with anxiety.

 

Jax turns to see Miriam speaking quietly with a grey-haired woman, obviously the one who’d just spoken.

  
“A medicine run went out yesterday to Cedars Sinai,” Jax says.  “They’re hoping to bring back what the sick kids need to get well again.  As for a quarantine, that hasn’t been discussed.  I’m on my way in to talk to Doctor Keppler, get an update on the situation.  For now, I just need you folks to remain calm and head home.  You can’t do anything to help here, and you’re only making it harder on the people whose kids are sick.  Please, go home.  When we have solid information, we’ll call a town meeting.”

 

“What about Reverend Rounder?” a gruff man’s voice demands.  Jax sees a heavyset middle-aged guy in a corduroy jacket standing by himself to one side of the milling crowd.  “I heard he’s got a cure.”

Jax shakes his head and tries to keep his expression neutral.  “As far as I know, the Reverend has no medical training.”

 

“There’s more ‘n one way to heal,” another man notes, moving up from the back of the crowd.  Jax recognizes him from yesterday’s service at Deliverance Church.

  
Jax nods.  “That may be so, but we don’t have enough information on the Reverend to make that judgment.”

 

“Then why don’t you go and talk to the man?” Petry demands.  “Afraid he’s going to show you up?”

 

Jax doesn’t appreciate Petry’s insolent tone, and he lets some of that dislike bleed into his eyes.  “What gives you the right to question me, Petry?  You’ve been here less than two weeks.  Seems to me you complain an awful lot for someone who’s just settled here and is living off the charity of his neighbors for the time being.”

 

This raises a murmur in the crowd, some approving, some clearly unhappy with Jax’s point, since it applies to them as well.

 

He notices a shift in the crowd, a kind of unconscious redistribution, until the majority of people on the right are original residents of Charming and the bulk of the people on the left are newer denizens, transplants from the post-apocalypse chaos beyond the town’s Gate.

 

“Look,” he says, realizing his mistake, suddenly almost painfully aware of what’s happening here.  “We haven’t come to any decisions about the Reverend.  He only showed up a couple of days ago, and we can’t just take him and his people in without doing our homework.  We haven’t got the resources, for one thing.  For another, this sickness started about the same time he came to Charming.  Now, I’m not saying he’s responsible for it, but until we know what’s making kids sick and how to cure it, we’d be stupid to take in any more people.  We just have to wait until we have more information.  I know waiting’s hard, but I’m going to say it again:  The best thing you can do right now is go home.”

 

Miriam leads the way, filing past Jax, giving him a half-smile and patting his arm.  The second group sways uncertainly until a few break away, pass him on the other side, not meeting his eyes or each other’s, but going, which is all he can ask for at this point.

 

Eventually, it’s just him, Petry, and the heavyset guy, whose face is hard, eyes inscrutable.

 

“I know what you did to my neighbors,” Petry begins without preamble, and Jax lets his face show his confusion.  He has no idea what the guy is talking about.

 

“The Jolsons.  Susan and Keith.”  
  


Oh, the spies.  Jax’s expression hardens to match the silent guy standing next to Petry, giving him a condemnatory look.  “Your neighbors were here under false pretenses.”

  
“Were?”  Jarvis voice, already reedy, raises an octave.

  
Jax snorts.  “Relax, man.  If we wanted ‘em dead, they’d have had an accident.”  In retrospect, it’s not the most diplomatic of confessions, but the other guy seems to appreciate Jax’s honesty and uses his admission as an opportunity to interrupt.

“Max Steinburg.  I’ve been here six months.  I live up on—“

 

“Redondo.  Yeah, I remember.  You’re a carpenter, right?”

 

The man nods, trying to hide that he’s pleased Jax knows him. 

 

“You agree with Petry here that I’m some kind of Hitler?”

 

“I didn’t—“ Petry starts to protest, but both Jax and Steinburg ignore him.

  
“No, but I am concerned that there doesn’t seem to be an efficient means of communication between the people of Charming and its leadership.”

 

“We have town meetings every week.  There’s a council of representatives who make decisions for the committees of communication, agriculture, power—“

  
Steinburg holds up a hand to stop Jax.  “I know all that.  But it’s not the same thing as having real control of the decisions you make for the town.  Like letting these people at the Gate be tested.”

 

Jax considers, wondering what the guy’s angle is.  “Someone’s got to be in charge,” Jax says—reasonably, he thinks.

 

“True,” Max answers, dipping his head.  “But why does it have to be you?”

 

Ah.

 

“I know you haven’t been here that long, Steinburg, and maybe you aren’t caught up on your Charming history, so let me fill you in.  I’m—“

 

“The ‘Chosen One.’  Yeah, I’ve heard.”  The way he says it, Jax can hear the derisive air quotes.

 

He ignores the sick curl of rage in his stomach, the way he wants to fist his hand in the guy’s collar and punch him bloody.  He’s so fucking tired of defending himself.  It’s not like he chose to be Chosen.

 

With a pretty impressive effort of self control Jax has never been long on to begin with, he takes a deep breath and lets his hands loosen from their half-clench. 

 

“Look, you want the job, fine.  Start a revolution.  See how that goes for you.”

 

“You’re saying violence is the only way to unseat you? Convenient for the man who leads an army of outlaw bikers and armed separatists.”

 

Petry, who up until this point had been watching the conversation like it was the world’s most fascinating tennis match, opens his mouth to speak, but Jax cuts him off.

 

“I’m saying that if God doesn’t want me to lead Charming anymore, He’ll take care of it.  You want to go toe to toe with the Big Guy, be my guest.  Let me know how that works out for you.  I’ve got things to do.”

 

He dismisses the two of them without another word, brushing past Steinburg, who doesn’t move out of the way, letting their shoulders bump.

 

Once inside, his problems don’t ease.  Dan and Jenny Jett are standing near the information desk, hands at their sides helplessly, faces the very picture of despair.  Jax feels his stomach flip, feels an iron fist close tight around his chest.

 

“Oh, no,” he says, which isn’t at all helpful.  “Not Jessica.”

 

Dan and Jenny’s daughter is barely a month old.  The last time he saw the couple, they were showing off their newborn at Miriam’s Café. 

 

“Jax,” Jenny breathes in a voice that sounds nothing like her.  She’s begging, and he feels hot shame in his face.  There’s nothing he can do for them.  Dan is stone-faced, eyes accusing, and though Jax knows he’s not to blame, he feels it anyway, the responsibility for the life of their daughter.

 

“Is she—?”

 

“She’s being examined,” Wendy says, coming up to the little group.  “You can come this way, Mr. and Mrs. Jett.  Dr. Knowles wants to ask you some questions.”

 

Dan puts a protective hand on his wife’s back and guides her away without another word to or look at Jax.  He stands there, feeling lost, hands clenching and unclenching, until Janine at the desk says, “Can I help you, Mr. Teller?”

 

No.  No, there’s not a goddamned thing she can do for him, but instead of saying something he’ll regret—something _else_ he’ll regret—Jax turns and heads back outside, backs his bike off the sidewalk, turns her out to the street, and roars away, trying to find in the soothing rumble of the engine and the brisk wind in his face some comfort or meaning.

 

No joy.  Something does give him a little spark of pleasure, though, and that’s the idea of taking out some of his helpless rage on people who deserve it, even if they are pathetically small fish.

 

That’s how he finds himself pulling into the driveway of the Sons’ safe-house on Millicent.  Lewis is on the front stoop looking bored, discarded magazine—2009 SI swimsuit issue—by his ass, which he gets up off of the cement when he sees who’s arrived.

 

“Hey,” he says, coming to attention. 

 

Jax gives him a tight nod.  “Bobby inside?”

 

“Nah, just Gordie.”

 

Jax nods again, raps twice on the door in rapid succession, waits a beat, and raps three more times, slow.  The signal is answered at once, indicating that Gordie had been at the door waiting for it.

  
“Where are they?”

  
Gordie indicates the big family room at the back of the house.  When  Jax enters, he finds Keith and Susan Jolson sitting side by side on the velour sofa, his left wrist cuffed to her right, ankles manacled likewise.

 

Keith tries to stand, but Susan doesn’t, which leads to an almost amusing moment of slapstick.  Jax shoves him back down hard onto the couch and growls, “Stay there.”

 

Susan gasps and then swallows the sound, eyes going wide.  Jax gives her a leering grin, and she squeaks, lips clamping closed, heat spreading across her cheeks.

 

“Time for you next, sweetheart,” he says, matching the leer with his tone of voice and then looking once again at her husband.

 

“You first.”  Jax kicks the man’s ankle manacle, sees the pain flare in his face where the metal strikes bone.  It’s just a love tap, really, but Keith blanches and starts to fidget.

 

“What do you want?  We told the other man everything,” Susan insists, surprising Jax.  He didn’t think she had the guts to speak out of turn.

  
He doesn’t look at her, though, just keeps his eyes on Keith’s face as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his knife, opens it casually, slaps the blade against his palm.

 

He feels vaguely ridiculous playing a movie villain, but if it gets the job done…

 

“I won’t tell you anything more.  I’m ready to die for my God.”

 

Jax laughs, a scornful sound.  “Who says I’m going to kill you?”  He lets his meaning fill his face with a cold light, knows from the way Susan breathes out a prayer—or maybe a curse, it’s not clear—that he looks like he means it.

  
“What does the Rev want with Charming?”

 

“Charming is the City of Light, the place we’re meant to rebuild God’s kingdom on earth,” Keith answers automatically, like a kid memorizing definitions from a flashcard.

 

“And what does that mean?”

 

“Revelation 21:2, ‘And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,” Susan says, her voice less automatic, more enrapt, as though quoting from a favorite book.

 

A chill stirs in Jax’s chest.

 

“This ain’t Jerusalem, sister.”

 

She shakes her head, a gentle, chagrined smile on her face, as if she’s forgotten to be afraid in the company of her vision.  “You’re wrong, Mr. Teller.  God promised that after the End there’d be a new beginning, a city on earth for all His people to live and thrive, a paradise like the first, full of light and promise.  Charming is that city, and we’re His people.  You can’t change that.”

 

Maybe she’s right.  Maybe his part in Charming’s future is already over.  Jax doesn’t know.  What he does know is that right now, the Reverend Rounder and his people represent an unknown threat that they can’t afford to ignore.

 

“Maybe not,” he answers, surprising them all with his honesty.  “But for right now, I’m still in charge until God tells me otherwise.  And I can tell you that it’ll take the Big Guy himself to get the Reverend and those people in the Gate if I don’t want ‘em in.  So why don’t you two just cooperate with me and answer my questions?”

 

“Why not let him be tested?” Susan urges, her fanaticism having apparently gotten the better of her fear.  “What can you lose by it, Mr. Teller?  If God wants our people here, He’ll show it by withholding His fiery hand.  And if not…well, He’ll take care of your problem for you.”

 

Against his will, Jax is starting to sort of like the lady.  Then he remembers she’s a spy sent here to upset the order of his town.

 

“Don’t try to play me, lady.  I know your kind, and you’re not welcome here, even if the rest of your people do pass the test.  There’s no place in Charming for traitors.”

 

At this, Keith lets out an ugly little bark of laughter, and Jax turns his gaze to the man, who until now he’d assumed had no spine.  But Susan’s husband seems to have caught a little of his wife’s fervor from her, for his eyes shine with a familiar—and familiarly sickening—light when he says, “You cannot keep us from our place at God’s right hand, Mr. Teller.  We belong here.  You do not.  And He will make it so, no matter what you do to try to stop us.  We’re blessed, His true Chosen.  You’re the traitor, having betrayed your promise to God for power and glory in the name of sin.”

 

Power.  Right.

 

“Whatever,” Jax says, bored now, and realizing his trip here was futile.  All it’s done to spend his anger is twist it into a heavy lump of dread in his belly. 

 

He turns away from the couple to stare out the sliding glass door into the backyard, quickly being swallowed in the shadows as the sun sets on another November day.  The yard is tall with unkempt grass, and idly, Jax wonders whose job it is to cut it and if that’s something he should look into. 

 

Sighing, Jax shakes his head ruefully and turns away, saying to Gordie, who has all this time been frozen in the doorway, “Don’t let them out of their chains.  We don’t want them escaping.  But make sure you feed ‘em and keep ‘em comfortable.  No sense being cruel, even if I am the King of Sin.”

 

The last is said with a bitterness that seems to trail him out the door, where Lewis is leaning against a porch support and trying to look nonchalant.  
  
“Everything cool?” he asks.

  
“Yeah,” Jax answers, meaning the opposite.  He should probably be more encouraging to the new patches, but he can’t seem to find it in him to feel anything but exhausted. 

 

All at once, he misses Dean with a fierce ache that leaves him a little hard and a little breathless.  Fuck.  He drags his mind away from wondering how his lover’s doing, if he’s okay, if they’ve had any luck at Cedars Sinai. 

If they’ve even gotten there alive…

 

The roar of the engine isn’t soothing, but at least it drowns out the string of curses he looses, the threats to the universe and general blasphemies he doesn’t want anyone to hear. 

 

 _Don’t be a pussy_ , he tells himself as he pulls into the driveway at the club, cuts the engine, backs into his spot.   

 

Bobby’s waiting for him at the door, security lights flickering on all over the yard as the day gives it up to the dark.  Jax hangs his head for a second before recovering what’s left of his patience. 

 

He doesn’t ask, _What now?_   He already has a pretty good idea.  Blue’s truck is parked up near the first bay.

 

_Maybe his truck just needs servicing._

 

“Blue’s got a problem.”

 

“Carburetor?”

 

Bobby snorts.  “You wish.”

 

Yeah.  Yeah, he does.  Jax stifles another sigh and heads inside.

 

Blue’s at a table with J.C., who’s tracing patterns on the laminate top in condensation from the beer bottle beside Blue’s hand.

  
He lifts it when he sees Jax, salutes with the mouth of it before taking a long pull.  Kerry hands Jax his own bottle over the bar, and Jax sits down across from Blue, which is J.C.’s cue to leave.  She trails her hand along Blue’s shoulders, pausing a moment to run them through the short hair at the nape of his neck, before she disappears into the back.

 

Jax raises an eyebrow.  “You poaching our bush, Blue?”

 

The big man laughs, takes another swig.  “Grace’d kill me,” he answers, and Jax joins in the laugh because that’s the honest-to-God truth. 

  
“Woman’s fierce,” Jax agrees, smiling.

 

“That she is,” Blue answers, plunking his bottle down on the table with a thud.

 

“So it’s not pleasure that brings you by…”

 

Blue shakes his head, face turning serious.  He leans forward on his elbows and forearms, pushing the mostly empty beer bottle aside.

 

“I’m a little concerned about some things I’ve been hearing, Jax, and I thought I’d better come to you directly rather than wait to see how they play out.”

 

Jax tries to look encouraging, though already his heart has kicked up a notch and he’s hardly looking forward to the conversation.

 

“Jarvis Petry says you threatened him and Max Steinburg with expulsion from Charming.  That true?”

 

Jax snorts and shakes his head, eyes going to the lampshade overhead, to the mirror over the bar, to the dark corner where Juice’s old desktop computer gathers dust like some poorly cared for museum exhibit.

 

“No, that’s not what I said.  I just reminded him that he’s here at the good graces of his neighbors.  Guy’s only been in town for a week and a half, man.  Doesn’t even have a job.  And I told Steinburg that if they don’t like the way I’m doing things, maybe they should start a revolution.”

 

Blue sits back a little in his seat, one hand wrapping around the beer bottle as if for something the do, the other making an indefinite gesture in the air.  “That smart, Jax?”

 

“Hell, no.  I was pissed.  And busy.  Steinburg started in on me about being Chosen, and I lost my cool.  I know it was stupid, you don’t have to tell me.”

 

“I’m not judging you, Jax, just askin’.”  Blue sits for a second, considering his next words.  Jax’s stomach flips again.  Blue is an important ally; he can’t afford to lose his trust.

 

“Petry made some claim about you holding his neighbors hostage.  Any truth in that?”

 

Jax nods.  “Yeah, he’s got that right.  Except his neighbors aren’t innocent citizens goin’ about their business.  They were sent in by Rounder as spies for his camps.”

 

Blue’s jaw tics as he tightens his mouth.  “That’s a problem.”

 

“They got in clean.  Signed the forms myself two weeks ago.  It wasn’t your guys’ fault.”

 

“Okay.  Still a problem, though.”

 

“They claim that Charming’s the New Jerusalem and Rounder and his people are God’s chosen.  They’re dead serious, too.  Say God’s going to take me out of power, put Rounder in my place.”

 

“Sounds like treason to me.”

 

Jax nods.  “Would be, if we had actual laws.  Or a Constitution. ”

 

Blue’s gaze sharpens on Jax’s face.  “You sayin’ you want one?”

 

“Don’t you?”

 

It’s Blue’s turn to look uncomfortable.  At last, he shakes his head.  “Maybe.  But now’s not the time.  We still have need for martial law.  Time’ll come when the people can have more power, but we’re not secure enough for that yet.”

 

“Way things are going, you might have to use some of your power against our own people, Blue.  You think you and yours are ready for that?  It’s kind of against your code, isn’t it?”

 

“We got more in common than you think, my people and the Sons of Anarchy.  We’re both suspicious of government and prefer freedom when it’s possible.  Law’s just for keeping people in place when they can’t be trusted on their own.  Guess I’d be happier if we didn’t have to have a civil war, but if it comes to it, we’ll back you.”

 

“Why?”  He doesn’t mean it like a smart-ass, either.  He’s sincere, and he tries to make that clear.  Blue’s startled look suggests he hears more in Jax’s voice than Jax intended, but he doesn’t try to cover for his uncertainty. 

 

“You mean because of the God thing?”  Blue has made it clear on a lot of occasions that he’s an agnostic on good days, a flat-out atheist most of the time.  His people seem mostly areligious, too.

 

Jax nods, sips his beer, waits.

 

Blue shifts in his seat again, a kind of half-shrug before sitting up straight in his seat.  “I don’t know whether you’ve got divine right or not, Jax.  What I do know is that you and the Sons have been a part of Charming from the very beginning, long before the End and all the crap that came with it.  You’ve sacrificed more than almost anyone to keep this town and its people safe.  And Dean…well, he’s been through more than any human being should have to suffer, and he just keeps coming back for more.  For your sake.  For mine.  For the whole damned world.  So the way I see it, we owe you—all of us, every last man, woman, and child—more than we can ever repay.  Least I can do is get your back when you need a little extra help.”

 

The speech—the longest Jax has ever heard from the normally reticent man—is delivered in a matter-of-fact tone, like he’s delivering a news report, not swearing allegiance to Jax and Dean and all the Sons. 

 

Even so, it takes Jax a good half minute to swallow around a sudden thickness in his throat.  There’s relief clogging it up, and hope, and maybe a little regret that Dean isn’t there to hear Blue talk about him like he deserves to be talked about—an epic hero, the real deal, something Jax has always known and Dean will never believe.

 

At last, letting out a breath, Jax says, “Thank you,” genuine as he can, eyes steady on the other man’s.

 

Blue nods, slaps the table, rises.  “Thanks for the beer.  Let me know what you need.  I’ll double the patrols and keep an eye out for any suspicious assemblies.  Or redcoats.”

 

Jax laughs and rises, too, pulling Blue into the one-armed half-hug universal to men of a certain stripe.  “Thanks, man.  I’ll be in touch.”

 

Blue’s been gone less than a minute when Bobby appears from somewhere in the back.

 

“He with us?”

 

“Hell, yeah.  We got no worries on that count.”  
  


The councilor makes a relieved sound.  “Good.  You eaten?”

 

For the first time all day, Jax’s stomach isn’t swimming with watery worry.  He nods.  “I could eat.”

 

“I’ll make you some eggs.”  Bobby does a mean scramble.

 

“Thanks, brother.”

 

After the simple meal, he wishes Bobby a goodnight and heads back to his room, which is emptier than usual with all of Dean’s shit gone.  Someone’s picked up the dirty laundry—probably J.C., she’s like a fuckin’ mother hen—and without it to stumble over, the room seems larger.  He kicks off his sneakers, steps out of his jeans, lays his cut carefully over a chair and skims his tee-shirt over his head.  Then he slides between the—clean, he observes—sheets and tries to will himself to sleep.

 

Mind racing with the myriad problems of the day, body a little cold from Dean’s absence beside him, Jax is pretty sure he won’t sleep, but he closes his eyes anyway and tries to imagine that Dean’s with him.

 

His own hand’s a poor substitute for Dean’s talented mouth, but it’ll have to do.

 

Breathing his lover’s name into the air as his hand speeds up, roughens and tightens, Jax comes hard, bucking into his hand, and wonders what Dean’s doing just then.

 

He hopes it’s the same thing.

 

That thought makes him smile, and the feeling of it follows him into sleep.

 

*****

 

 _There’s no such thing as a fearless man.  Only one too dumb to know that he’s in danger.  Fear keeps us alive.  Courage is being scared shitless and going ahead with it anyway, regardless of what might happen or how it all might turn out._ (The No-Shit Epistles 51:3-6 [Apocryphal])

 

They cross 118 with the sun just breaching the horizon, lighting up a thousand windows on the buildings of San Fernando.  It would be beautiful if it weren’t for the fact that every damned window means another potential hiding place for super-Freaks.

 

Here, 5 meets a snake’s nest of other highways and roads, and at an interchange, a multi-car pile up partially blocks their way.

 

Dean idles, eyeing the wreckage, while Sack gets out and is joined by Chibs, both of them armed with automatics.  They don’t fuck around at roadblocks, particularly since super-Freaks tend to be smarter than your average Romero zombie and a hell of a lot faster.

 

When Chibs disappears around the front end of a jackknifed car carrier—thankfully empty when it had wrecked, or the mess’d be even bigger—Dean holds his breath.  Sack has Chibs covered, has stopped behind the safety of the rig’s open hood, eyes presumably following Chibs’ invisible progress.

 

The kid waves, disappears around the rig himself, and Dean exhales.  Opie, on the roof mount, raps twice to indicate that Dean should creep ahead.  Behind him, he sees the Escalade rolling forward, too, but keeping a safe distance in case the Jeep has to back up fast.

 

He noses carefully around the front of the rig, grimaces at the human remains scattered like dominoes across the roadway and the crunch of bone beneath the tires.  Ahead, an accordioned SUV t-bones a Jetta, the front end of which is resting on a crushed, lime-green crotch rocket.

 

Dean knows if Jax were here, he’d say something about the plastic piece of rice-burning shit.  It drives a wedge of longing into his heart.

 

They make their slow way through the decaying chaos of the scene, past a mini-van with the side door wide open, a car-seat half-torn from the wreck, hanging by a lone grey seat-belt.  Past a plumbing truck, its load of PVC pipe scattered across the road like a giant’s game of pick-up-sticks.

 

Past another bike, this one a Harley, front wheel bent almost back to the gas tank, saddlebags spewing their content onto the road—a faded black tee-shirt, or maybe a wifebeater; a crushed bottle of sunscreen; a broken pair of aviator sunglasses.

 

Even after all these years, it’s still a sobering scene, the suggestion of a life interrupted.  Dean wonders idly if the rider had been solo or had his old lady riding bitch and then wishes he hadn’t wondered at all.

 

The pile-up seems to spread a half-mile or more, and after the Harley, Dean concentrates on the space immediately in front of the Jeep and on Sack and Chibs ahead, guiding them through the worst of it.  He doesn’t want to see any more, imagine what these people were doing when the end of the world took them by surprise.

 

Past the interchange, Sack gets back in, the wreckage finally clear, though here and there are abandoned vehicles in various states of destruction.  A Mercedes seems untouched except for the jagged metal knob where the hood ornament must’ve been.  A Comcast truck, on the other hand, offers a shattered windshield, buckled doors, blown-out tires as a testament to some terrible violence.

Down below, Dean watches the green-and-brown bowls of algae-stained empty swimming pools, the toothy grin of windowless houses, roofs with their shingles blown off in patterns that resemble the mange.  He sees no movement, not even animal, and wonders where all the dogs are.

 

Packs of feral dogs had been a problem on a few of the latest med-and-food runs.  Juice had been bitten, had to have a course of rabies shots, just a month before.  Here, though, there doesn’t seem to be any life at all, and Dean supposes he should be grateful that the ‘burbs, at least, are peaceful enough.

 

He’s probably going to regret even thinking it.

 

They merge onto 170 without incident, no accidents to slow them down, and they’re cruising at a steady 55 when they pass Universal Studios theme park.  Sack makes a sound—excitement, maybe—and Dean slows a little despite the urgency of their mission.

 

It’s strange to see the skeletal coasters rising up out of the overgrown green belt of the park, as if some Jurassic monster had been trapped there, upright, and the flesh had rotted from his bones, twisted into fluid shapes as wind and time stripped them clean.

 

An impatient rap from overhead has Dean hitting the gas once more, and the theme park is nothing but a mirage in the rearview.

 

Soon enough, the sign for the West Hollywood exit appears, and Dean slows, negotiating the remains of a school bus as he takes the ramp with extra care, eyes straining ahead of the curve, wondering what they’ll find at the bottom.

  
Off the highway is where things will get dicey.

 

Dean reflects that the last time he was on Hollywood Boulevard, Sam was with him.  They’d had the windows on the Impala rolled down, music blaring, cruising in moderate traffic, ogling the hot women and smiling like they had all the time in the world.  Of course, Dean hadn’t—that was the year he numbered his days, the year before he went into the Pit.  But even with a death sentence hanging over him, life had been pretty good.  They were on their way to a job—haunted studio, actually—and Sam was laughing for real like he hadn’t in a long time.

 

Swallowing around sudden grief, the kind that takes him by surprise at the stupidest things, Dean says, “Where do we turn?”

 

“Fairfax,” the kid answers automatically.  Indeed, they all knew the answer, had drilled and drilled on the directions in case they’d gotten separated and had to make their individual ways to the hospital.

 

But it gives him something to do, distracts him until his heart can settle and his eyes clear of the mist the memory of his brother often brought.

 

Dean makes a wide left, half up onto the sidewalk to avoid a ptomaine truck tipped over into the street, the other lane blocked by a metro bus squatting on four flat tires.  From the dashboard, the driver’s skull leers at him and he shivers.

 

“What happened that all these people just died?” Sack asks, giving voice to a question Dean had asked himself many times.  All those years he’d been on the road after the shit hit the fan and before he’d put Lucifer down for good, Dean had wondered how so many people could have been caught out doing the usual, routine things—walking or biking or driving or riding the bus, shopping for groceries, picking up dry cleaning.

  
It wasn’t like there hadn’t been signs:  fires, floods—notably, a rain of venomous snakes in Phoenix.  Maybe people were just stubborn about denying what they couldn’t change.  He didn’t know their reasons.  What Dean was sure of is that none of them expected to die on a city bus or while buying lunch at the corner of Fairfax and Hollywood Boulevard.

 

Who’d make a street vendor hot dog their last meal on purpose?

 

Just south of Melrose, they pass a wide green space to their left.  A brown-and-white sign identifies it as Rosewood Park.  Palm trees near the entrance list dangerously, sagging on dead power lines.  One has fallen onto a bus stop bench still sporting the tattered remnants of an advertisement for a television show.

 

Something bursts out from behind the brown leaves of the palm, streaks across the road, and Dean resists the urge to slam on the brakes.  He swears a blue streak, though, and then laughs to see it’s a deer.  He slows then, careful, knowing that where one is, usually a whole herd follows.

  
That’s not what comes next, though.

 

Like something out of a movie, an honest to God mountain lion leaps into view, giving the Jeep a startled glance as it bounds past them in pursuit of its prey.

 

“I think I saw that in a movie once,” Sack remarks, and Dean laughs, a relieved burst of sound that stutters in time with his trip-hammer heart.

 

That the Discovery Channel scene is the only life they’ve witnessed in a city this size seems ominous, and Dean’s heart, though it steadies, doesn’t settle.  Something’s not right about any of this.

 

“There should be Freaks,” he says, giving voice to his fear.  He’s half-hoping the kid tells him he’s paranoid.

 

“Yeah,” Sack answers, worry evident in his tone.

 

_Shit._

 

Just past the Farmer’s Market Opie gives a warning rap on the roof just as Dean makes out movement to their left—a shadow passing across the darkened interior of a store-front, shattered window spewing slatted blinds like elongated teeth.

 

“Shit,” he says aloud, speeding up, knowing Ope would have signaled Juice to do likewise.  The Jeep is past the store, the Escalade even with it when three dark figures burst from its interior and race toward them.

 

“Shit, shit, shit,” Dean chants as one of the three latches itself on the driver’s side mirror, one foot on the running board for purchase.

 

Juice had had the window rolled down, and the Freak has its arm on him, the Escalade yawing and fishtailing as he struggles to free himself and still stay on the road.  As Juice lays off the gas, frantic, the two other Freaks catch up to the car, and Dean slams on the brakes and into reverse as Ope opens up in single-shot mode, trying to pick off the two, one of which is trying for the passenger side door.

 

The Escalade skids to a stop with its front tires up on the curb, and Dean comes to a screaming halt, dropping the Jeep in park as he kicks open the door and brings his sawed-off around, which he’d put on the seat beside him for just such an occasion.

 

Juice is being dragged out of the Escalade one inch at a time, and Dean can’t get a clean shot at the Freak on him, so he swings the gun around and takes out the third Freak, this one coming up from the back of the Escalade to get in on the action with Juice.

 

From above, Ope shoots the second Freak, the one working on Chibs’ door, and Sack comes around the front of the Jeep to stand beside Dean.

  
“What do we do?” 

 

Dean eyes Sack, sees the kid has a machete.

  
“Good idea,” he notes, trading weapons.  “There’s no safety, so don’t drop it,” he warns, already striding toward Juice, who’s almost out of the car now, struggling and shouting, trying to keep his neck from the creature’s gaping mouth.

 

“Hey!” Dean shouts just before he closes with the thing.

  
Its head comes around, malevolent eyes avid in its grey face, and Dean swings the machete, saying, “Close your eyes and mouth,” as he slices into the thing’s neck.  Juice sags in its grip, and the startled monster drops him to bring its hands up to the spouting gouge in its neck.

 

Juice lands on his knees, scuttles out of the way, and Dean goes in for the killing blow.  The head hits the ground with a wet, thick noise, the body sliding bonelessly down the Escalade’s driver’s side door.

 

“You okay?” he asks Juice, and the biker nods, waving a hand from where it’s propped on his knee.  When he looks up a second later, Dean sees a streak of blood on his neck.

  
“Did it bite you?” 

 

Juice brings a shaking hand up to his neck and then pulls it away to stare at it like he’s never seen it before.  There’s a slick of blood on his palm, and Dean watches the shock pale his caramel skin to ash.

 

“Juice, did it bite you?  Is that yours?”

 

After an agony of seconds, the man shakes his head, says, “No,” laughs like he might cry, and shakes his head again.  “No, it’s not my blood, see?”  He uses the tail of his tee-shirt to wipe his neck clean, and Dean comes closer to inspect the spot.

 

Not even a scratch.

 

“You lucky bastard,” Dean says, relief and admiration and love in his voice.  Juice gives him a thousand watt smile and Dean has to resist the urge to kiss him wet and messy.

 

“If we’re done with the love-fest we should get going,” Ope notes from the roof mount on the Jeep.  “I see movement back the way we came.  There are more of ‘em.”

 

Dean sees Chibs looking worriedly down Fairfax.  “You see more?” he asks.

  
Chibs nods, holds up two hands, nine fingers total.

 

“Shit.”

 

“Let’s go,” Ope urges, and then they’re back in their vehicles and pulling out, windows rolled up now—lesson learned—eyes tense ahead, Dean’s hands tight on the wheel.

 

“Next turns on your right, Sixth,” Sack says, voice tight and high. 

 

“Got it,” Dean answers, eyeing movement in two storefronts, one on either side of the street just ahead.

  
He puts on speed, sees Juice riding his bumper, and they’re past it as Freaks boil out of the buildings and give chase.  They lose them just in time to take the turn, tires squealing and smoking on the street.

 

“Four blocks, and then a right on San Vicente,” Sack chants, as if directions are a talisman against evil.

 

But the noise of their coming has alerted the creatures that call Sixth Avenue their home, and they’re pouring out from broken windows and unhinged doors, from behind a UPS truck wallowing on its rims, rear doors flapping, from a sidewalk café with overturned wrought iron tables bleeding their rust into the gutter.

  
Dean doesn’t slow to take in details, just barrels ahead, Ope’s big gun up above stuttering away, the Jeep’s reinforced front grill acting like a battering ram, throwing Freaks ten, twelve, fifteen feet as he gains speed. 

 

A half a block up there’s a bus tipped onto its side and completely blocking the road.

  
“Shit!”  Dean shouts, even as Sack is saying, “Left here!  Here!” and he’s screaming up to Ope, “Hang on up there,” as the Jeep shrieks into the turn, hanging and hanging and hanging as gravity considers turning them over, and then she’s bulling down, bouncing on four wheels, and he’s gaining speed, watching the Escalade grow huge in the rearview as Juice keeps pace with him.

 

“Right!” Sack shouts again, and Dean makes this turn wider, Wiltshire giving him some space, no cars at the intersection by some strange miracle.

 

He manages to avoid a blue U.S. mailbox tipped over in the far lane, comes back to the center of the street, says, “What now?”

 

“Up there,” Sack says, pointing to a complex of black glass and taupe concrete taking up an entire city block just a quarter mile ahead of them.

 

Dean lets out a shaky breath, tries to still his hands, shaking from the adrenaline spike, and keeps his eyes open for more Freaks.

 

“There’s a garage,” Sack notes as they approach the first building.  He’s pointing to a Parking sign hanging by one screw from a light pole.

 

“Is it attached to the buildings?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then it’s a bad idea.”

 

Dean turns down a street within the complex, feels eyes on him from the windows that rise up to every side of them.  He doesn’t like this one bit.

 

Ope calls down, “On the right, up ahead.”

 

An enormous building straddles the road, and it widens into a loading and unloading zone near a long set of glass doors, most of them nothing but jagged fragments now.

 

Dean pulls up to a sign that warns him it’s temporary parking only and kills the engine.  Ope climbs back into the Jeep and gathers his weapons as Dean and Sack hop out on either side and go to the back to get their own.

 

Juice and Chibs join them on the sidewalk, the gloom of the space shadowing their features. 

 

Ope has the lead on this mission:  “We don’t know where the pharmacy is, but there has to be a directory at the information desk, and every building should have one of those on the main floor.”

 

Tara hadn’t been sure where they might find the meds, but she’d given them what help she could about how to navigate any big hospital.

 

“We stick together—no splitting up.  We might need all the firepower we can get.  We find the pharmacy first, and if we have time, we can do some more recon.  You got your lists?”

 

J.C. had copied out the list of target medicines that Tara had given Dean.  They all pull slips of paper from various pockets and hold them up like they’re tickets to a bowl game.  J.C.’s loopy handwriting seems out of place and makes Dean suddenly homesick.

 

“Let’s go,” he says, even though he’s not in charge.  Ope says nothing, just nods, and they all head inside, stepping cautiously through the gaping frames of the broken doors, glass crunching under their boot soles.

 

Inside, it’s permanent dusk, and Chibs and Sack turn on flashlights, the beams jogging with their jerky movements.  It’s like an obscene striptease in snapshots, the light catching here a bloody handprint dried to brown flakes, there a severed leg.  The chairs of the waiting room are scattered, some of them broken, one hooked at a wild angle over the television mounted in one corner and ripped half from its struts by some terrific force.

 

Behind the desk is a torso, rib cage visible through the rotten fabric of a security uniform.  A gun lays mute and dormant on the floor under a dangling telephone receiver.

 

“Here,” Chibs says, voice hushed.  “Guess there’s a pharmacy in a lot of the buildings?”

 

“Yeah, Tara said that was probably the case,” Dean whispers.  “Anything in there about chest problems…uh, pulmonary care?”

 

A moment later, Chibs is nodding and resting his thick finger next to a building on the map. 

 

“That connected to this one?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Bring that,” Ope says, referring one more time to the map and then heading down a corridor, Sack just behind him to his left shining the flashlight ahead of him.

 

“Here we go,” Dean breathes, mostly to himself, and Juice slaps him on the back once.  When Dean looks at him, Juice gives him another killer smile and a thumbs-up.

 

Dean shakes his head a little at Juice’s enthusiasm and takes rear guard behind Chibs, who’s wielding the second flashlight.

 

Half-turned, gun pointed behind them, eyes roving the right side of the hallway, Dean feels a shift in the air when they pass the wider space of the elevator lobby, and he turns to take it in, Chibs’ light raking across the littered floor, the gaping black maw of an empty shaft, exterior doors propped open with a trash can.  From the hole a slight draft stirs flyers and leaflets still pinned to a corkboard nearest the hallway, one of them a poster urging Dean to give blood.

  
When nothing crawls up out of the pit, he keeps walking, following the others but keeping his eyes on their six.

 

The corridor narrows for admissions offices, reinforced windows bowed inward in crazy-glass patterns like funhouse mirrors.  Past that, the emergency ward opens to either side, and Ope makes a noise as he shoves a bed out of the way on uneven casters.  As they pass, torn privacy curtains sway like the ghosts of those who’d died in the bloodied beds, some of them overturned, mattresses spewing yellow foam. 

 

He tries not to make out shapes, but his brain can’t help put the puzzle of joints and sockets together, and he realizes he’s looking at a child’s remains when Chibs holds up a hand for halt.

 

Three yards ahead, Opie gestures for Sack to scout the next hallway with the light. 

 

Dean scans the rear, eyes straining for any sign of something sneaking up on them in the sepia gloom of the unlit hall.  The smell of the place creeps over him.  Even after all these years, there’s a faint antiseptic scent coupled with what Dean had come to recognize long ago as animal fear. 

 

Over all of it is the vague metallic tang of old blood.

 

God, he hates hospitals.

 

“Hsst!”  Dean turns to see them moving out, Ope once again in the lead.  He disappears through a doorway limned in red reflective paint, which Dean realizes leads to a stairwell.

 

It’s a close, concrete space, air heavy with their echoed breaths, lights bouncing strangely off the angles of the treads.  Dean’s boot scuffs a stair-edge and he swallows a curse, tries to climb without stumbling while simultaneously watching their backs.

 

He’s more relieved than he can say when they exit on the third floor.  His neck crawls with the certainty that something’s slithering up the stairs behind them, but there’s nothing he can see.

 

They’re headed for a short pedestrian breezeway that connects two buildings, and the quality of the light there is like a paradise between gloomy limbos.  Unconsciously, they all speed up only to be brought up short when Sack stops at the threshold of the walkway and holds up a hand.

 

Gathering up behind him, Dean sees what’s stopped the kid.

 

The floor of the breezeway is gone, rusty rebar like broken ribs, red insulated wires dangling like arteries, concrete crumbling.  There’s not enough left of the flooring to risk a jump.

 

“Shit,” Ope hisses.  Sunlight makes his face pale, catches highlights in his beard.  He looks older than his twenty-eight years.

 

“There’s another walkway two floors up,” Sack says from where he’s leaning precariously out into the walkway, staring up through the Plexiglass.

 

“Let’s go.”

 

Back to the stairs for another interminable climb, and this time Dean would swear he hears something below, half expects to see glowing eyes staring up at him when he peers over the railing to the lower flights.  
  
He can make out nothing.

 

The eerie stillness of the place has him on edge, and Dean tries to breathe through the ratcheting beat of his heart.  He can feel the pulse at his throat, feel his hands throbbing with his heartbeat against the grip of his gun.

 

The fifth floor is brighter, open doors from empty rooms—he imagines them as empty, doesn’t want to know what’s really inside—letting in light that filters over the chaos of the hallway.

 

Somebody had set fire to the nurses’ station.  A pile of melted plastic might have been computer monitors. A shattered blue mug, the word “Mother” still visible, lies on the floor beneath a hook on which a strangely preserved pink smock hangs.

 

Still, Dean doesn’t realize where they are until he notices beneath the grime and dried blood and other indeterminate stains a line of tiny pink and blue painted booties, which his eyes follow against his will until he sees the expected glass wall on his right.

 

Steeling himself, Dean takes a long breath and tries to focus on what they’ve come for—saving kids back home—and not what they’ve come to.

 

Chibs curses a steady string of words under his breath, almost unconsciously, Dean suspects.  It’s impossible not to see what the big room behind the observer’s glass looks like.

And once he’s seen it, Dean knows he’ll always see it, on those nights when his sleep is fractured with horror, in the early morning hours when he can’t sleep at all.  In the thin, quiet afternoons of remembrance, when he’s haunted by his failures great and small.

  
Dean had nothing to do with the tiny remnants of happiness scattered like dolls beneath overturned bassinettes, had no responsibility for the viscous matter dried to thick paste at one edge of the big window, just beneath the face of a smiling baby admonishing visitors to be quiet while they watch the infants sleep.

 

Even so, he feels his heart swell in rebellion, feels something coat his throat, gagging him.  A noise from behind brings him around in a half-crouch, gun up, safety off.  He’s ready to kill something.  Anything.

 

Nothing.

 

Ahead, the others have reached the walkway, and he can tell by their posture that the way through must be clear.  He jogs to them, hoping there’s another way out of this fucking place because there’s no way he’s walking past that room again.

 

Four pairs of eyes share the same understanding, and he nods, jaw tight, and exhales through his nose.

 

For a brief, shining moment, he’s alight with warm sun, the blue sky blurry through the scratched Plexiglass but present in a way that makes him slow down, consider staying behind just to remain in the light and out of whatever horror awaits them down the next wing of the massive medical complex.

 

Movement below brings his eyes down to a Freak making its way along the empty sidewalk below.  Another ambles out from the ground floor of the building they’d just left and meets up with the first as though they’re going for coffee.

 

As Dean watches, a third, fourth, and fifth come out of hiding.  He’s just considering moving off to let the guys know they have company when all five Freaks freeze and crane their heads upward.

 

Dean ducks down, startled into swearing, and crouches low to be out of sight of the windows, which come down to waist height.  There should be no way the Freaks could see him to begin with, much less now that he’s duck-walking down the breezeway, but still he feels exposed.

 

On the other side, Ope is giving him a questioning look.

 

He mouths “Freaks,” and holds up a hand, fingers splayed wide.  Five.

 

Ope nods, mouth in a grimace. Sack gives him a nervous look, Chibs and Juice exchange glances, and then they’re moving off at double-time, taking less care with open doorways, more worried about finding the pharmacy and getting out of there before the Freaks can gather.

 

They stop by the nurses’ station—this one strangely intact, not even a telephone receiver off the hook—to consult the map again. 

 

“Fourth floor,” Chibs notes, and they make for the stairwell at the far end of the hall, stepping over the messy remains of what was probably more than one person.  Inside, more bodies, long gone in decomp, leathery fragments of faces staring up at them from under horror-show wisps of hair.

 

“I fuckin’ hate hospitals,” he breathes, and Chibs bobs the light in answer.

 

The pharmacy on the fourth floor is easy enough to find for the rainbow of pills scattered like candy across the floor.

  
The shelves are empty, not so much as a tongue depressor or urine strip left.

 

“Shit!”

 

They regroup just outside, pills crunching under foot, and use a cleared med cart to spread out the map.

  
“Here’s the next nearest pharmacy,” Sack says, pointing to the third floor of an identical building parallel to the one they’re in. 

 

“We can cut through the main building,” Juice picks up, jerking his thumb past yet another nurses’ station and down a dim hallway divided by closed double doors.

 

Chibs closes and stows the map, picks up his flashlight, leads with his gun as the others follow in a staggered line and Dean brings up the rear, trying to watch his feet, their backs, the hallway ahead, head tight with tension.

 

The double doors pose a problem.

 

“Electric,” Juice whispers, examining the emergency button on the wall, which has been half-torn from its mooring, wires like hair trailing down the wall.

 

“We can go up another three floors,” Chibs advises.  “There’s another breezeway to the main building there.”

 

“Fuck,” Ope says, but there’s no real heat in it.  They’re all tired from tension, worried at the delays, feeling like it’s probably a futile mission to begin with, judging from the state of the first pharmacy they’d tried.

  
“Let’s go.” 

 

Thankfully, they don’t have to pass the nursery again, just take the stairway in this building up three flights.

 

Here, the stairwells are on an exterior wall, and at the sixth floor landing, fresh air brushes their faces from the shattered window.

  
“Holy shit,” Dean breathes, considering what kind of power it took to blow out the double-paned safety glass.  He ignores the instinct to look out the window, afraid of what he’ll see far below—not the remains of whatever (or whoever) had made the hole to begin with.  No, that’d be preferable to what he expects to find—an army of Freaks filing into the building.

 

He’s not imagining the noise on the stairwell far below.

 

“Company,” he says when they get to the seventh floor hallway.  The fire doors close inward from the stairwell, and this one’s twisted by some cataclysmic force.  They’ll be lucky to close it at all.

“There,” Ope says, snapping his fingers at a heavy filing cabinet on a wheeled platform near the nurse’s station.

 

Juice and Sack haul it into the stairwell, stalling it on the shallow threshold until Dean puts his shoulder to it and they get it over.

 

They turn it so the broadest part is facing the stairwell and then tip it over.  It crashes down the stairs with a terrific, ear-splitting squeal, like a herd of possessed pigs, which Dean’s actually had occasion to experience first hand, and lands at an angle halfway down the stairs, effectively slowing, if not altogether blocking, pursuit from that direction.

 

Of course, “We aren’t getting back out that way,” Juice says in an ordinary voice.  There’s no real need to hide their location now. 

 

For good measure, they wrestle with the bent fire door, pulling it mostly to and jamming it with a length of pipe conveniently abandoned in the hall across the way.

 

“Let’s move,” Ope urges, and they go, taking the hallway at a jog, slowing only long enough to ensure that the breezeway back to the main building will hold their weight.  No signs of tampering, though, and they’re over in a flash, pausing again when they get to the main hallway that transects the building, running perpendicular to the wing down which they’ve just run.

 

It seems clear, though “clear” is a relative term given the destruction apparent on every side.  Now and then they come upon a corpse that makes Dean wonder about what the person was thinking when he or she died.  In one case, the shriveled hand is still wrapped around a cell phone, so no mystery there.  But in another, the person—a woman, he thinks, by the spill of straw from beneath her tight surgeon’s cap—seems to have been leaning against the wall, as if in an attitude of total relaxation.

  
He’s sure it’s an effect of the IV pole on which she’s impaled, but still…weird.

 

The trip down the hall is ominously uneventful, so he’s almost expecting trouble when they round the corner to cross the next breezeway into the far tower.

 

Sure enough, from some distance down the hall past the breezeway comes the sound of footsteps, shuffling but distinct.

 

They share a speaking look and then start an easy jog over the breezeway for the far building.  The sound gets closer, but still they can’t see anything, and Dean’s just about to suggest they regroup when Ope signals from the lead that it’s coming from the stairwell.

 

Together, they converge on the door, Sack ducking his head through the doorway and reporting, “One flight!”

 

Sack and Ope grab the door, Sack darting into the stairwell to kick up the doorstop, and then yank it to just as something throws itself against it.

 

A twisted face leers through the criss-crossed safety glass of the narrow window in the door as the door handle twists beneath Opie’s hand.

 

“Is it locked?” Chibs asks.

  
The two give him identical looks of scathing disbelief.   

 

“Right,” he says, but Dean’s already moving on their problem. If they let go to test the lock, and it’s not locked, they’ll be overrun and have to fight their way free. 

 

“Here!” Dean calls, ripping a length of thick electrical cabling from a hole in the wall next to the fire alarm.  Casting around for something to secure the handle to, Dean sees a door labeled “Women’s” directly across the way.  He secures one end of the cord to that door handle, tosses the other end to Sack, who deftly loops it into a dead-man’s noose and gives Ope a three-count nod before throwing it over the handle the big man’s hand has just left.

 

There’s a little give in the length, but not much, and though the Freak on the other side can get his arm through, he’s stuck for the time being.

 

Given Freaks’ super-strength, however, Dean knows it’s a temporary fix.

  
“We’ve got to go,” he calls, already jogging back the way they came, assuming the lead as though he’s born to it.

 

There’s a second stairwell on the other side of the tower, and they only need to get to the hallway halfway down that bisects the building at each level.

 

Their way is blocked by yet more carnage, a crushed wheelchair, sway-backed gurney with its folded occupant spilling from it, a portable heart monitor, two med carts like obscene bumper cars in the midst of all the human collision.

 

Then they’re by the wreckage and into the far corridor, sprinting now toward the second stairwell, hoping it’s clear.

 

It is, though they can hear far below sounds of movement.  Ignoring it for the moment, they take the stairs two at a time, bursting out onto the third floor just as a Freak shows its head one flight down.

 

They don’t even bother to shoot it, not wanting to attract more attention and too fixed on finding the pharmacy now to stop for the time it would take.  Instead, they pull the fire door closed, hoping it’ll lock.

 

This is their last chance, Dean knows.  If it’s a bust, looted like the other, they have to get out.  The Freaks are amassing an army, and there’s no way they’ll make it out if they get trapped before they can find high ground—or whatever the equivalent of high ground is in Beverly Hills.

 

And if they get cut off from their vehicles…

 

Focus, he reminds himself, sliding to a stop next to Ope, who’s staring at the closed pharmacy door.

  
Fuck if it doesn’t look like it’s locked.

  
“Really?”  Dean breathes.

 

Ope shrugs and looks back at him.

“We could shoot it?” 

 

“Too much noise,” Chibs observes.

  
“What’sa matter?  Afraid your old-man hands can’t manage it?”

 

This from Juice, who’s giving him a wide, shit-eating grin.

  
“Fuck you,” he answers conversationally, pulling his brother’s lock-pick set from the inside pocket of his leather jacket, where he always keeps it.

  
Not close to his heart or any girly shit like that.  Just convenient.  Right.

 

Dean’s pretty rusty at larceny.  In the days after the beginning of the End, there wasn’t much call for breaking gently into anyplace.  Shoot, kick, take, have—that was the pattern of his days for a long, long time.

  
And this is some heavy-duty security, no cheap push-button or lazy deadbolt.

 

Fuck.

 

It takes him three minutes, and there’s sweat beading on his forehead and snaking down the side of his neck by the time he feels the last tumbler give, turns the handle oh-so-carefully, afraid of jogging the rake and bringing all his work to nothing.

  
The handle turns, the door swings inward almost silently, and Chibs brings a light to bear.

 

Meds.  A lot of them.  Shelf after neat shelf.

  
It’s like a fucking miracle.

 

From a distance, they hear a shriek of metal on concrete.

 

That galvanizes them, each of them stowing their guns, getting out a light and their lists, skimming polysyllabic names for the ones they need. 

 

“Here!” Ope calls, naming one of the six on the list as his big hand shoves a jumble of bottles into an empty backpack they’d brought for this purpose.

  
“Got azithromycin,” Juice adds, calling out the name uncertainly.  It sounds wrong, but who is Dean to judge?

 

“I’ve got the Albuterol,” Chibs says.

 

Down the line, they find what they need, until there’s only one med left on the list.  Sack is stuffing whatever else he can carry into another knapsack, while Dean frantically scans the shelves but comes up with nothing.

 

Another crash, this one closer, brings all eyes around to the pharmacy door.

 

“We’ve got to go,” Ope says.

  
“Far stairwell will take us outside,” Chibs offers.  They consider, no one saying anything, weighing the merits of staying inside where there’s cover—for them and the Freaks—or making a run for it in the wide open, where their guns can do more damage.

 

“Outside,” three of them say at once, Dean and Ope concurring by falling in.  Heavy pack bouncing against his back, the weight of responsibility tangible now—they have to make it out of here, have to get these meds back to Sam and the other kids—Dean sprints, feeling a twinge in his knee but keeping a steady pace, down the hall to the stairs, bursting through the door to hear something clattering down the staircase from above, racing down the stairs, missing steps, jumping the last few on each flight, until they’re at the fire exit and out, movement to his left and he’s shooting, Ope and the others going wide to the right.

 

“This way!” Juice shouts, running for the corner of the building and cover, and Dean keeps up heavy fire, aiming low for the legs, slowing them down, not focused on killing, just on escape.

 

They’re at the opposite side of the complex from where they’d parked, with two buildings and a lot of hungry Freaks between them and the cars, but the sun is shining and they’re highly motivated. 

  
Juice lets out a whoop and opens up as he turns the corner first, Dean following seconds later to see a horde—only in Hollywood could they muster an actual _horde_ —of avid, infected undead coming right at them at maybe twenty yards and closing.

 

Ope’s in front with a scattergun laying streams of lead, and they fan out to either side of him like some latter day OK Corral, high fucking noon in the post-apocalypse.  He half expects to hear a penny whistle.

 

What he doesn’t expect is return fire.

  
“Holy shit!” Sack shouts at the same time Chibs cries out, “Motherfucker!” and goes down, swift stain of blood on his thigh all the evidence they need—in case there was any doubt—that these Freaks came armed.

 

It’s not unheard of.  Way back in the part of Dean’s brain that isn’t stuck on “spray, drop, reload,” there’s a memory of a rainy, green Oregon town, of infected neighbors with hatchets and shotguns and Bowie knives.

  
But in the ensuing years, there’s been no evidence that the Freaks are technologically advanced.  If they’d had the ability to drive, for example, they’d have been camped outside Charming with bibs on, like fat kids locked out of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

 

So this newest development just seems like overkill, the universe’s laugh at Dean’s expense.

  
As if he hasn’t already been the butt of cosmically unfunny jokes.

 

That’s when he notices the Freaks’ apparel.  Freaks, as a general rule, aren’t big on fashion.  As far he knows, they wear what they were infected in until it rots from their bodies, and then they run around naked.

  
He’d seen some fairly horrifying sights at the Shady Pines Adult Life Community outside of Phoenix.

But these Freaks are all strangely uniform in appearance—torn, stained jeans; boots; leather fuckin’—

 

“Are they wearing cuts?” Juice shouts, giving Dean a wide-eyed look.

 

Dean nods and fires again, wondering how much ammo he has left in the duffel that isn’t loaded with meds.

 

“Hells Angels,” Ope calls out.

 

Great. In all the world they had to come to the one place with demonic, undead bikers.

 

Jax is going to laugh his ass off.  Assuming Dean makes it back alive.

 

Another burst of unfriendly fire chips the sidewalk a few feet in front of them, and Sack cries out, drops his gun to throw his arm across his eyes.  Dean sees Chibs struggling to stand, using his assault rifle for leverage.  Ope has taken cover behind a garbage can, and Juice is trying to flank the Freaks, using light poles and bus benches for cover.

  
It’s just Dean out there in front of the raving horde, and even as he’s scanning the perimeter for someplace to go, he hears shuffling behind him and turns to find another group of Freaks heading their way.

 

“No chance they’re Outlaws?” Ope calls, and Dean snorts.  The Outlaws were notorious blood enemies of the Hells Angels. 

 

But his humor is short-lived when he realizes he only has one clip left for the AK and maybe six for his .45, which isn’t going to be enough.  Not nearly fucking enough.

 

All thought of finding cover flees with the realization that there’s nowhere to go.  Surrounded by the rapidly advancing mob of Freaks, peppered by sporadic—though largely inaccurate—gunfire, the Charming contingent is done.

 

Dean’s not the kind of guy to surrender to the inevitable, though.  He’d prefer to kick inevitable in the balls and give impossible a few loose teeth before he goes down.  So he slides the AK to single shot and starts picking off the Freaks coming from behind.

  
Head shot.  Head shot.  Head shot.

  
It doesn’t significantly reduce their numbers, but it makes Dean feel better, and he starts humming a medley of Metallica’s angriest songs while he picks his targets.

 

Red-headed dude with acne.

 

Stupid yuppie guy with Texas belt buckle.

 

Woman in a blue power suit and sneakers.

 

Man, he’s always hated that look.

 

As if they’re miles away, he can hear the report of the others’ guns like fireworks across a long field: three, so Chibs must be holding his own.  He spares a glance for Sack, who’s managed to retrieve his gun and stagger toward Juice’s position, homing by the deep boom of Juice’s favorite MAC 10.

 

Then Dean’s eyes are back on the mob, tracking over faces he only takes in long enough to triangulate a shot.  Eyes-nose-boom, eyes-nose-boom, eyes-nose-boom.

 

Like futile, slow-motion dream fleeing, the Freaks keep coming, no matter how many of them Dean puts down.    
  


“What, did they send out a fuckin’ invitation?”

 

Still, the bodies are piling up, the vanguard slowed to stumble over them, giving Dean a little more time to line up his targets.

 

He doesn’t have a chance to look over his shoulder again, doesn’t notice that the others’ shots are slowing, coming fewer and further between.  He’s staring down the long dark barrel of a very near end, a freight train heading into an unfinished tunnel.

 

And then the world is on fire.  He has a distant early warning, a whoomphing sound that snatches the breath from his lungs and stands the hair of his arms on end.

 

Then he’s blinking away streamers of light, black-tailed comets that shoot across his vision, and he can breathe again, but his nose burns at the stench of gasoline and he chokes and gags with it.

 

“What the—“ he gets out before Juice is hauling ass past him, yanking on his arm.  Dean half-spins from the kid’s impact, takes in Chibs limping fast toward him, Ope just behind leading Sack, who’s still guarding his eyes with his hands.

 

They find shelter from the lung-searing heat behind an aluminum-sided laundry truck.  Dean has no idea what the fuck just happened, but he’s not complaining.  Everywhere he looks, Freaks are on fire, shrieking and staggering into each other, clawing at the places where they burn.  There’s something horrific and beautiful about it, the way the fire seems to hover just over their flesh, a blue-and-orange glow like they’re lit from within, until the skin blackens and curls, muscles contracting, fingers bent to claws as the meat is stripped down to bone, which gleams obscenely white in the bright California son.

 

A reflected movement in the silver side of their covering truck has Dean searching for its source, and he sees something he’s sure is a vision.  Blinking, he wipes a hand across his face and looks again.

 

Nope.  Not a vision.

 

There’s a man standing behind the burning zombies—no longer two discrete groups now but a single mass of writhing, screaming agony.  He’s dressed in black—black jeans, black boots, black shirt, long black duster.  Mirrored sunglasses.  Black cowboy hat.

 

Flamethrower.

  
“Fuckin’ Tombstone,” Dean breathes, watching with admiration as their savior flambés the Freaks one last time, the roar of the weapon like a latter day dragon.

 

When their enemies are nothing but a stinking pile of melted flesh and charred bones, Ope and Dean step out from the cover of the laundry truck, guns steady on the cowboy.  Dean’s using his .45—it’s less offensive, he thinks, suggests a friendlier intention than the AK.  Ope’s got Juice’s MAC 10.  So much for diplomacy.

 

“Who the fuck are you?” Ope asks in a tone that utterly fails to convey gratitude for having his ass saved.

 

Dean shoots him a look and says out of the side of his mouth, “What, you thought ‘thank you’ was too fresh for a first introduction?  Jesus.”

 

“I’m Ace,” the man starts.

  
 _Of course you are_ , Dean thinks. 

 

“Aesop Werner.”

 

_Oh._

 

“Of Thermopolis.”

 

“Wait, I think I saw this movie,” Dean says.  Next to him, Ope laughs, a short, humorless bark. 

 

“Wyoming,” the man clarifies.  “I come in peace.”

 

Dean can’t help it.  The guy’s holding a fucking flamethrower, for God’s sake, and has just finished frying about a hundred undead Freaks.

 

He laughs.  It starts as a snort, segues into a chortle, and by the time he gets to guffawing, there are tears in the corners of his eyes.  He should care that the .45 is hardly steady on its target, that Chibs is bleeding, Sack blinded, and they might themselves be turned to s’mores in the next three minutes—maybe _because_ Dean is laughing at the guy holding the flamethrower—but he can’t help it.

  
It’s just too fucking much.

 

“You’re the messiah,” from the cowboy pretty much sends Dean into knee-pounding, cough-inducing fits, and by the time he can take a deep breath without giggling, Ope’s lowered the MAC 10 and walked forward to hold out a hand to the guy.

 

To his credit, Aesop doesn’t lift the flamethrower and blow out the pearl of blue at its tip.  He takes a side-step over to a planter, dips the tip in the dirt, and then lets the weapon dangle by its strap to brush his hands together before offering one in return to Opie.

 

“We should go,” he says then, lifting his weapon once more.  “I’ll be out of fuel shortly, and the spare tank’s on my bike.  Also, there are more on the way.  L.A. is crawling with them.  You really shouldn’t have come here.”

 

That begs the question of what Werner’s doing there himself, but the man’s right—they don’t have time to chat.

 

Dean wipes moisture from the edges of his eyes and stows his AK—it’s useless for the time being, but there’s more ammo in the Jeep—and gestures to Werner to fall in with them.  He doesn’t like having an armed stranger at his back, no matter how oddly benign the man’s intentions seem to be, but he trusts Ope to keep him in one piece.

 

Chibs leans on Ope’s off side, so the big man can still shoot if he has to.  Juice leads Sack up the rear, keeping one eye and his gun on their six, one arm out for Sack to use as a guide.

 

There’s surprisingly little resistance between them and the car.  Dean shoots a couple of stragglers who seemed more interested in getting out of the way than confronting them—he guesses the big-ass flamethrower must register in what passes for the lizard part of their infected brains—but otherwise, the coast is clear.

 

The vehicles seem unharmed, parked right where they left them, with the notable addition of a chopped-out vintage Harley HydroGlide backed in against the curb behind the Cadillac.

  
“Seriously?”  He can’t help the disbelief in his voice.  He’s pretty sure he’s seen this movie, too.  “Your head isn’t going to turn into a skull and catch fire, is it?”

 

Dean can’t be sure of Werner’s expression behind the mirrored shades, but he’s pretty sure there isn’t one, at least not if his neutral tone is any indicator:  “I don’t know what you mean.”

 

Dean cocks the .45 and aims it, arm steady, six feet of no-way-to-miss between them.

  
“What the fuck are you?”

 

“Dean!”  Ope growls.  “What are you—“

 

“Angel?  Demon?  T 300?  You got glowy red cyber eyes under those contacts, asshole?”

 

“Dean?”  Juice’s voice is more warning than order.

 

“He’s not human, Juice.  Trust me.”

 

Ope’s never bought into Dean’s demon-hunting cred, but the other Sons have always been more open-minded.  Maybe they don’t quite believe a lot of the stories Dean tells when he’s had too much to drink and he’s missing his father and brother, but if that’s the case, they’ve always been too polite to show it.

 

Ope, on the other hand, thinks Dean’s nuts.

 

“Dean, put the gun down.  We don’t have time for this dickhead bullshit.”

 

“What. Are. You?”  He enunciates each word, biting it off, rage building.  He’s not sure what he’s planning to do if the guy says, “Angel,” but it probably involves pulling the trigger.  Often.  Until it clicks on empty.

 

“I’m not an angel,” Werner clarifies, as if reading Dean’s mind, which—no.  He has his hands up in a palms-out gesture of placation.  “Not exactly.”

 

“Then what, _exactly_ , are you?”  It’s Ope’s turn to sound deadly, his intentions as obvious in his voice as if he’d retrieved his guns from where he’s already stowed them in the back of the Jeep.

 

“I’m a Messenger.”

 

He says it like a choir of angels should break out at the declaration.

  
Dean blinks.  “Messenger of what?”

 

He knows the answer, but he’s still thinking about pulling the trigger, and hearing the expected words seems like a good incentive.

 

“Of God.”  This he says like maybe Dean ate paint chips as a child and had to ride the short bus to school.

 

“Bullshit,” Dean, Opie, and Chibs say in chorus.

 

“Aesop is my willing host.  It is complicated, and I will be happy to explain, but I think we need to go now.”  His eyes track over their heads.  Dean doesn’t fall for it, but Juice starts swearing, and he knows what that means—close encounters of the Freak kind.

 

“Fine.  Let’s go.”  Thinking, _Maybe we’ll lose him on the way up San Vicente_.  A guy can dream.

 

Of course, they don’t lose him.

 

He follows them back the way they came, up onto 5, out of the San Fernando Valley.  Dean wonders if that murderous flock of crows is still around, wonders if a Messenger of God could withstand that.

 

He’s perversely disappointed, then, when they arrive without incident at the San Luis Reservoir.  Dean’s all for pushing through, but they’d be hitting Stockton in the dark, and that place is crawling with undead Freak ex-cons, the only thing worse than infected undead biker Freaks.

 

Which is how they end up sitting around a campfire making awkward small talk with a Messenger of God who inhabits what used to be a John Deere salesman from Wyoming.

 

“Wyoming?”  If his tone suggests that of all the places worth saving from the Apocalypse, Dean wouldn’t have figured Wyoming to be high on God’s list.

 

“It _is_ Big Sky Country,” Sack points out.  They’d cleaned his eyes out once they were on 5 and in the clear, relieved to discover the blindness was receding, to be replaced by the worst case of red eye Dean had ever seen on anyone not actively possessed by a crossroads demon.  
  
“That’s Montana, moron,” Chibs answers, cuffing the kid in the back of the head.  There’s affection in his voice, but his words are slurred more than usual.  Juice had snagged some primo painkillers in his shelf-clearing at Cedars Sinai.

 

“Wyoming was not untouched in the Strife.”  The Messenger capitalizes all kinds of nouns, has a way of saying words that makes Dean’s back teeth grind almost involuntarily.

 

“Big deal, so Wyoming is God’s country.  What the fuck are you doing in L.A.?”

 

“I came because you were here, Dean.”

 

There’s a way he has of inflecting Dean’s name, somehow investing it with more significance.  It’s like a hand in secret places no hand should be, and Dean has to concentrate not to shiver.

  
“You came to L.A.  From Wyoming.  To see me?  You had to go through Charming to get here, why not just wait there?”

 

But the Messenger is shaking his head.  “I came through Arizona.”

 

“God doesn’t give his Messengers some kind of divine GPS, they gotta wander around the desert for forty days?”

 

In life—his own life, that is—Aesop Werner was a forty-something, leather-skinned, dark-haired guy with broad shoulders and the raw chiseled looks of a Marlboro man, minus the lung cancer and stained teeth.  The expression he wears now is unnatural, like he’s trying to do an impression of someone being confused.

 

Dean rolls his eyes.  “Why were you in Arizona?”

 

“I made a pilgrimage to the place where you were reborn, to pay homage to she who healed you from your trials.”

 

Dean laughs.  “Were you dressed like that?”

 

The Messenger gives an uncertain nod.

  
Dean laughs harder.  “Dude, you look like a reject from a Johnny Cash look-a-like contest.”  He imagines Sari rolling her eyes and then settling the stranger at her table with a kind of long-suffering patience, feeding him, showing him the place on the Hopi reservation where Dean’s delirious, hell-scarred body had been found, taking the Messenger then to the well where she’d drawn water to wash him clean of the blood—his and his brother’s.

 

By the end of the mental tour, Dean’s not laughing.

  
“She okay?”

 

“Sari sends her best.  Cindy, too.”

 

Dean smiles fondly, remembering his travelling companion, the golden retriever who’d smiled through every struggle until at last he’d had to leave her where she was better off.

 

“So why me?”

 

“You are the—“

 

“You say ‘messiah’ again, I’m going to clock you.”

 

Even by the light of the fire, Dean can see the Messenger weighing the cost versus the benefit of finishing his sentence.

 

At last, he says instead, “I have a message.”

 

“For me?”

 

“For The King of the World.”

 

Dean sighs.  “Again:  Why not go directly to Charming?  Why stop in L.A.?”

 

“You needed assistance.”

 

True enough, but—  “How’d you know that?”

 

“We are all linked, Dean.”

 

“. . .”

 

“What the fuck does ‘linked’ mean?” Ope chimes in, impatience warring with disgust in his voice.  He’s never been down with the more metaphysical aspects of Charming’s continued survival.

 

“All of us, all of the Messengers, can feel the King and the—“  He replaces the objectionable word with a hand gesture that is, if possible, more unsettling still.

  
“Stop that!” Dean snaps.  “Just…call me Dean.”

 

The Messenger nods as if having been conferred a great and glorious boon and then promptly ignores the favor.

 

“We are linked to the King and his Consort, so that we may know where they are and find them if there is need.”

 

“So what’s the message?”

 

“I cannot give it to any but the King.  Not even to you, Consort Dean.”

 

Juice breaks first, then Sack.  Chibs is half out of his head on painkillers, which might justify his high-pitched squeal of laughter if he weren’t also slapping Opie on the back and saying something indecipherable over and over again.  Ope holds out the longest, but even as stoic as he is, he can’t keep a straight face.

  
Dean’s own face is hot with embarrassment, and he’s considering whether killing a Messenger of God is likely to get him fried on the way in to Charming when the Messenger says, “I also have a message for you.”

 

Dean levels him a serious look, and the Sons quiet.

 

“Your doubt is a test in itself.  Overcome it, and you shall be blessed beyond all men.”

 

It’s on the tip of his tongue to say, “Bullshit,” when he considers what the Messenger has actually said.  “So I have to jump through God’s faith hoops, is that what you’re saying?  Not enough I killed my brother, died and rose from the dead, and then almost died again saving His holy city.  I gotta prove my faith by—how, exactly?  What the fuck does God want from me?”

 

His voice, which had started out with the quiet menace of a prowling animal at some distance, is broken and raw at the end, loud with rage and hurt and a thousand things Dean never says aloud.

 

“There are no tests beyond this one, Dean:  Have faith, and you shall be blessed.”

 

“I don’t know what that means,” he answers, a bitter tide ebbing from his tongue.

 

For the first time, the Messenger bears an almost human expression.  Unfortunately for Aesop Werner’s body, that expression is pity.

 

Apparently, Messengers of God _can_ be knocked unconscious.

 

*****

 

 _Not all prophecies actually tell the future.  Some of them just clarify what’s happened in the past and how that affects the present moment.  A lot of fortune telling is just good observation combined with killer instincts.  If we listened to our gut more often, silenced the stupid and stubborn parts of our brains, we’d have the future in the palms of our hands all the time and never need a reader to tell us what the lines say._ (The No-Shit Epistle 56:3-6 [Apocryphal])

 

There’s a delegation at the end of the driveway leading out to the street from the clubhouse when Jax emerges from his night of fractured sleep into the bleary, gray-pink of dawn. 

 

He’s not a morning person, but God didn’t seem to have taken that into account when he’d given Jax not only the care of the people of Charming but a sixth sense about their well-being.  When his dreams had morphed into figures running, familiar faces twisted and frozen into various expressions—fear, hatred, maniacal laughter—he’d figured he’d better get up.

  
Bobby had met him at his door with a cup of coffee and the cordless land line phone.

 

“Hale.”

 

He’d paused only long enough to burn his tongue before saying, “Yeah?”

 

“Don’t kill any of them.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“The people at your door.  Don’t kill them.  Just…talk to them.  And try not to threaten anyone with a crowbar this time.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

Hale could still be a self-righteous prick, but he’d long ago conceded that the Sons and Charming’s Army had an important job to do that he himself, with his little group of deputized volunteers, couldn’t manage. 

 

Also, Jax controlled the ammunition supply.  Sometimes, it paid to be king.

 

Most of the time, though—like right now—it just sucked.  And not in an “oh-baby-that-feels-good” kind of way.

 

His approach is noticed, and the contingent of citizens—led, he notes with an internal sigh, by Jarvis Petry—turns as one to stare him down.  They’re quiet, at least—no shouting or restless milling around—and they don’t have signs.

 

Thank God—or paper and lumber rationing—for small favors.

 

“What can I do for you today?”  He tries a tone of hearty good will, but he’s pretty sure it comes out more surly than service-like.  He’s got three hours sleep caught in his throat, he’d used his fingers for a comb, and he hasn’t shaved in…six?...days.

 

They look at him like he’s a zoo animal in a poorly put together cage.

 

Petry, predictably, speaks first.  “We’re here to demand that you do something about the Reverend Rounder and his people.  It’s not right to leave them sitting outside.  It’s dangerous beyond the Gates.  They could be attacked by Freaks or Scavengers or—“

 

Jax’s expression seems to do the trick of shutting the guy up.  He’s pretty sure he looks pissed because that’s how he feels.

  
“Demand, Petry?  You’re _demanding_ —“

 

“What he meant to say was that we’d like to _ask_ you to consider letting the Reverend be tested.” 

 

This time Jax can’t restrain a sigh.  It’s Max Steinburg.  Of course.

 

Max doesn’t wait for the words Jax is about to speak.  “We’ve discussed it, and we think we could accommodate them temporarily out at the old Veteran’s Field.  They’ve got their own tents, and there’s the stream that runs back of the field.  They could purify the water.  Marv Letterman and his boys, Marty and Michael, are willing to dig a couple of pit latrines.  And if you wanted, a bunch of us could take a food run into Arizona.”

 

Jax’s first reaction—after annoyance that people are getting together to talk about how they can run Charming better than he can—is consideration.  After all, if these people want more responsibility, who is he to say no?  Let them take it onto their shoulders for awhile and see what it feels like.

  
Except, of course, if it all goes wrong, it’ll be Jax’s mess to clean up.

 

“So you’re going on a food run?”

 

Max Steinburg looks a little nervous.  Petry has managed to worm his way two deep into the crowd, effectively taking himself out of the discussion.

 

“Uh…well, maybe not me, personally.  I mean, I’m myopic, and without my glasses, I can’t—“

 

“Your people, then.  Some of these people.”  Jax lets his eyes pan the crowd slowly, making eye contact with the people who manage it, recording the faces of those who can’t.

 

“Well, sure.  Why not?”  He doesn’t sound sure.

 

“And what are you going to use for defense?  Most of the cities are crawling with Freaks.  And worse.”

 

In fact, Freaks are about as bad as it gets, but the more they imagine crawling around out there, the better.

 

“Well, Marty can shoot.  And Jarvis, of course.”  Jax glances at the other man, who has paled and is shaking his head slightly, as if afflicted with a sudden palsy.

 

“And, well…” He turns around.  “Marcy can shoot.  And Jim.  Eloise?”  The grey-haired woman in a brown tweed jacket and prim librarian’s upsweep says, “Of course I can,” as though it’s an offense to her gender to even question it.

 

“Okay.”  Jax keeps a straight face, intent on his point and not wanting to tip his hand.  “And what are you going to use for vehicles?”

“I’ve got a Range Rover,” Eloise offers.

  
“Good.  Gas?”

 

“What?”  This from Petry, who seems confused.

  
“What are you going to use for gas?”  He says it slowly, like Petry is a kid who has trouble paying attention.

 

“Well, we have a supply.”  He gives Jax a challenging look, like he’s about to catch the biker in some kind of semantic snare.

  
“ _We_ do.”  He emphasizes the collective, hitting it hard to point out Petry’s assumptions.  “And we ration it for medicine runs, like the one my men are on right now.  And perimeter patrols.  Farming machinery. And to fuel the hospital’s back-up generators and the klieg lights on the Junker Bunker if the electric plant should be overrun.”

 

“You drive all over on that bike.”  Petry sounds petty, and there’s a shifting in the crowd, people moving almost imperceptibly away from him.

 

“My bike gets 45 miles to the gallon.  Do you know how many times I’d have to circle the perimeter to use a full tank?”  As rational as his point is, Jax’s tone suggests that Petry will get Jax off his bike the day the earth stops spinning. 

 

“We can siphon gas from our lawnmowers and—“

 

“What lawnmower?”

 

“What?”

 

“You have a lawnmower you aren’t telling us about, Petry?  That’s a violation of the gas rationing law.”

 

Five years ago, if you’d told Jax Teller he’d be enforcing community laws on lawn care equipment, he’d have laughed in your face and probably punched you.

 

And yet…

 

“I—.  I—“

 

Steinburg sounds disgusted when he steps up beside Petry and edges him backward with his shoulder.  “He doesn’t have a lawnmower, Mr. Teller.  He probably hasn’t even looked in his garage yet.  He only got a place two days ago.”

 

Petry’s mouth moves like he’s trying to say something, but it’s clear he’s done here.

 

Steinburg, on the other hand, isn’t going quietly.  “Maybe we can work out a compromise here, Mr. Teller.  Your people are always risking their lives to supply us with rations we haven’t been able to grow yet, and we don’t really give you much in return.  Maybe you could use a few of us on your runs, or as patrol people around town, or in an organizational capacity.  I’m not sure of the logistics.  But what I do know is that it’s not right to leave those people out there like that.  It seems…vindictive.”

There’s a collective sigh, like people are wishing Steinburg had used a different word.  
  
“I’ve got no reason to want to see the Reverend come to harm.”

 

Steinburg gives him a long, steady look.  “He called you a false king and accused Mr. Winchester of being an abomination.  I’d think that’s reason enough for you to want to get rid of the guy.  And maybe we can’t blame you.  Some of the things he says aren’t too popular with us, either.  I, for one, am not all that comfortable with the Jesus talk.”  He laughs, a faux-hearty sound, like he’s encouraging others to laugh with him and share in his Jewish good humor.  
  
There’s nothing.

 

Maybe sensing that he’s losing the crowd, Steinburg rushes on.  “But the fact is, those are human beings out there, Mr. Teller.  Maybe among the last people on the planet.  You can’t keep them out of their only safe haven.  It’s just not right.  If you—“

 

Steinburg, realizing the direction of his sentence, stops there.

  
Jax isn’t about to let him, however.

 

“If I what, Max?”

 

Steinburg runs a nervous hand over his mouth.  “If you don’t let them in, we’re going to have to do something about it.”  He stands up, shoulders back, chest out, like he’s preparing for martyrdom and expects a fanfare on his way to the gallows.

 

Jax shrugs.  “Okay.”

 

“Okay, you’ll let them in?”  Steinburg’s tone suggests he’s not quite convinced.

 

“No.”  Jax pauses, making sure the crowd is all looking at him before he speaks.  “Do something about it.”

 

Somewhere, Jax pictures Hale groaning and cursing in his Boy Scout vernacular.

 

No one seems to know what to say to that, and when Jax turns his back on the crowd and heads back up the driveway, he hears them dispersing, voices low, murmurs of worry and wonder, here or there a voice raised in passive-aggressive anger, hoping he’ll hear but praying he won’t turn around and pursue them.

 

“You sort it out?” Bobby asks, handing Jax another cup of coffee.

 

Jax runs a tired hand over his face, pulling his hair back, too and then letting it drop again.

 

“If you want to call it that.  I’m going to have to meet with Hale and Blue later.  We might have a problem.”

 

“What kind of problem?”

 

“The ‘one if by land, two if by sea’ kind.”

 

“Jesus.”  Bobby doesn’t sound alarmed or worried.  He sounds disgusted.  It’s sort of gratifying.

  
“Yeah.”

 

“Tara called from the hospital.”

 

Jax plunks heavily into a seat at one of the tables.  When he sets his coffee down, it sloshes over the side onto the table.  He ignores it in favor of staring at his hands—scarred knuckles, hard calluses, blunted nails.

 

“Three more kids are sick.  And they lost Bobby Aruyana last night.”

 

“Shit.”  He pictures the skinny little dark-haired boy, maybe six or seven, whose favorite thing was to sneak up and tug on the back of Jax’s cut and then run away when Jax would visit the Home with cookies from J.C. or toys the Sons had scrounged up on some run or other.

 

He pushes away a wave of grief, down into the place where he builds his rage out of it, and says, “Can you get Hale and Blue here later, maybe around 3:00?”  Blue always takes night patrol, so Jax doesn’t want to bother him until he has to.

 

“Sure.  Anything else?”

 

“Got anything for guys who think they’re God’s gift—literally?”

 

“Got lightning.”

 

Jax gives Bobby a look, wondering if the guy is yanking his chain.  But Bobby’s face is serious.  “You might have to let ‘em be tested, Jax.  Can’t leave ‘em out there forever.  Longer they’re there, the more trouble you’ll have in here.”

 

Bobby’s right, Jax knows he’s right, but it doesn’t sit well with him.  Something about the Reverend and his merry band of zealots just sets Jax’s teeth to grinding, and it’s not just about the shift in balance of power if he lets the guy in. 

 

Something’s off about the guy, Jax can feel it.  So maybe he should let the good Reverend be tested, see what happens.

  
But what if he’s wrong and the guy’s fine with God?  Then what?  All the objections he voiced to the crowd out front—and a couple dozen he kept to himself—are still true.

 

Shit.

 

“Where’s Piney?”

 

“Takin’ care of the kid so Rita can get some errands done.  She’s got a shift at the community garden, too.”

 

“J.C. and the girls?”

  
“This is their day to work the kitchens at the Hostel so Anna and Pete can have some time off.”

“Lewis?”

 

“Hey,” Lewis calls from the doorway out to the yard.  “Med run is back.  And they’ve got an extra.”

 

Jax takes the hallway at a fast stroll, his swagger all but gone with the knee-weakening relief that the Sons are back— _Dean_ is back.  And then with the anxiety, sharp and cold, that maybe someone ( _Dean_ ) is hurt.

 

He can see Dean behind the wheel of the Jeep, and he lets out a breath that might have had a prayer in the back of it, if he were a praying man.  Bobby, next to him, might hear a curse instead.

 

He wants to shove Dean against the hood of the Jeep and give him a real hero’s welcome, but since their posse seems to be up one—or Johnny Cash has come back from the dead with an exceptionally good taste in bikes—he’s going to have to wait on showing Dean how happy he is to have him home.

 

Instead, he waits a little in front of Bobby, eyes on the big guy in black who’s climbing off his vintage HydroGlide like he was born on it to begin with.

 

He pulls Dean into a quick, rough embrace, breathing private things into his neck.  Dean slaps him on the back twice to let him know he hears it, and they part so Jax can repeat a less intimate but no less heartfelt greeting with the others.

  
“Chibs?” He asks after the greetings are over, his stomach dropping to his knees and breath tightening with dread.

 

“We dropped him at St. Thomas.  He took one in the leg.  Doc Maartens says he’ll be fine, though.”

 

“Good.”

 

Only when he’s done checking on his brothers does he turn to the stranger, who all this time has been standing with a blank expression, hands crossed in back like he’s waiting at ease.

 

“How many times I told you not to pick up strays?”

 

Ope snorts and Dean laughs outright.

 

“This is Aesop Werner, but you can call him Messenger of God.”

 

There’s no missing the shot of bitterness, anger back, in Dean’s tone.

 

“Messenger of God?  Jesus, haven’t we got enough of those?”

 

“The Reverend Rounder does not speak for God.”  Werner’s voice has a quiet authority nothing at all like the good Reverend’s braying.

 

Jax’s eyebrows go up and he gives Dean a look, which Dean returns with a shrug.

 

“But you do?”  Jax’s skepticism is apparent.

 

“I am His Messenger, appointed to bear His word to the people.”

 

“Sounds familiar.”  The scorn is as evident as the disbelief.

 

“I have a message for you from the Lord, Jackson Teller.”

 

There’s a beat while everybody waits.

  
“It is your message alone.”

 

Jax shakes his head.  “There’s nothing you can say to me that my brothers shouldn’t also hear.  Spill.”

 

But Opie interjects before the Messenger can speak.  “Maybe you should take it inside, Jax.”  His words can be read as observation or admonishment.

  
Jax gives the VP his eyes.  “You got some reason for not wanting to hear this?”

 

Opie shrugs.  “Dean’s message was pretty personal.”

 

Jax swings his glance to Dean, who looks pissed off.  Jax isn’t getting anything there, at least not right now.

 

“Let me hear it,” he says at last, turning back to the Messenger.

 

Without irony, ceremony, or even inflection, the Messenger says, “The Sons are not alone in the world.  I come bearing news of worlds beyond worlds, of others who walk the Lord’s path.  Await a sign.  Have faith in your own way.  The Day is almost upon you.”

 

“You want to translate that?” Jax asks drily, giving the Messenger a smirk.

 

“I speak the word of the Lord as purely as this human vessel can convey it.”

 

“Yeah, well, the vessel sucks in that case.”

 

“I do not understand.”

 

“He’s saying you aren’t much of a Messenger if we can’t understand your message.”  Dean’s voice is the kind of angry that’s had time to stew so that only tired, bitter, and cynical floats on the surface, hiding the deeper substance of it beneath the simmering darkness.

 

“I cannot speak any words but those I am given.”

 

Jax and Dean make almost identical noises of dismissal and are turning away when Bobby says, “I think he’s saying that there are other people in the world, that a message is coming about those other people.”

 

Jax turns his eyes back to the Messenger, who hasn’t so much as blinked since he delivered his stupid riddle.

 

“That true?”

 

The Messenger seems to consider Bobby’s words, a shadow of emotion—maybe confusion—on his face.  At last, he bends his neck, not so much a nod as an apparently painful concession to gravity.  Jax wonders that his spine doesn’t break.

 

“Got anything more?” Jax asks Bobby.

  
Bobby shakes his head.  “Naw, but I’ll write it down, think it over.  Why don’t you come with me?” He says to Werner.  “You can repeat it so I can put it in the book.”  He spares a look at Jax, sort of asking permission to let the Messenger into the clubhouse, and Jax waves him off tiredly, a _whatever_ gesture.

 

“Shower?”  Dean’s come up behind him, close enough that Jax thinks he can feel his lover’s heat on his back.  It’s probably the sun, which has finally cleared the building, taking them at last out of the cool shadows of morning.

 

“Yeah,” he says, not ashamed at all that there’s a breathiness to the word.  He suddenly feels like Dean’s been gone for weeks, not days.  Sometimes the need comes over him to touch Dean, to feel all that solid flesh under his hands, as if Dean or Jax himself would disappear if they didn’t ground each other.

 

Sometimes that need is impossible to ignore.

  
Hard-on making it difficult to walk straight, Jax manages to make it into the clubhouse, pausing only long enough to let J.C. and Kerry smother Dean with welcome-back kisses before giving Dean a look that only an idiot could misread.

 

Dean’s no idiot.

 

Five minutes later, they’re naked, hot water sluicing down Dean’s back as Jax bites into the tight knot of muscles along Dean’s shoulder, bites until Dean’s knees start to buckle, until he moans and tries to duck out of Jax’s grip.  Jax stills Dean’s struggle with a hand on his hip, the other coming around to stroke his hard cock.

 

Dean bucks into the touch, throws his head back hard enough that Jax feels a twinge along his collarbone.  He loosens his teeth, trails tight nips along Dean’s back and then bites again, this time at the join of neck and shoulder.

  
Dean shudders and comes, breathing Jax’s name, shaking involuntarily like he’d come apart if Jax weren’t holding on.

 

“A little anxious?” Jax smirks, finally abandoning the sharp taste of skin in favor of rinsing his hand under the shower’s warm, steady stream.

 

Dean turns in the narrow space under the showerhead, eyes dark with wanting, and drops to his knees, wrapping a hand around Jax’s cock and guiding it into his mouth. 

 

He lets go then, gripping Jax’s ass instead, using his hands to guide Jax forward, to set the rhythm of his thrusting.  The hot water runs over Dean’s head and down onto the part of Jax exposed when Dean pulls back, so that there’s a constant contrast of hot mouth and hotter water, a sense of slippery heat that breaks Jax’s limited control.

 

Jax splays one hand on the tile wall behind the showerhead and with the other grasps the back of Dean’s head, pulling him further onto his cock and deepening his thrusts.  Dean doesn’t struggle, doesn’t try to get away, though between the water and Jax’s length, he must be having trouble breathing.  Instead he moans, a choked sound from deep in his throat that whipcords down Jax’s spine and brings him hard, shouting and plunging wildly into the willing cavern of Dean’s mouth.

 

He’s glad he put a hand on the wall because Jax is pretty sure he couldn’t stay upright otherwise.  Dean’s looking up at him with his eyes red from the water still pouring over him, lips swollen from Jax’s punishing pace.  Jax wants to do things that are anatomically improbable if only to make Dean look like that all the time.

 

Even having just had a most spectacular orgasm, Jax feels a tingle in his core to imagine Dean walking the world with that wrecked, just-fucked expression on his face.

 

Maybe Dean sees Jax’s thoughts in his face because when he rises, he eats at Jax’s lips, a devouring kiss, all bite and thrust, hips bumping Jax’s, flaccid members touching uncomfortably. 

 

Jax brackets Dean’s hips with his hands and pulls him hard against him, breaks free of the kiss to suck a mark into Dean’s neck and whisper a promise into his ear.

 

“I’m going to fuck you until you scream and then ride your throat raw.  I’m going to fuck you until you can’t speak except in a whisper that tells everyone what you’ve been doing with your mouth.”

 

“Promises, promises,” Dean teases, using the pretense of retrieving the shampoo to push his knee between Jax’s leg and press against his sac.

 

Jax takes the bottle from Dean, says, “Turn around,” voice low.  Dean makes him want to give up every ounce of control, but there’s work to be done, and the hot water in the tank will only hold out for so long.

 

Dean dutifully gives him his back, and Jax runs his sudsy hands through Dean’s hair.  Dean releases a long breath and says, “Dude, this has to be the gayest thing we’ve ever done.”

 

Jax laughs.  “I’m pretty sure my cock in your mouth is gayer than this.”

 

“Maybe.  But if you start singing show tunes, I’m going to punch you just on principle.”

 

“I’m not the one who owns the soundtrack to _Jesus Christ, Superstar_.”

 

“It was my brother’s!”

 

“Riiiiight.”

 

It’s an old exchange, all the sharp edges rubbed away by time and familiarity.  Neither of them really cares if people who don’t know them think they wash each other’s hair and sing duets from _West Side Story_.  Mostly, Jax thinks they find comfort in it—a kind of fall-back to the days when they had families and girlfriends and lives that weren’t quite so complicated.

 

Although in Dean’s case, his life was always pretty fucked up.

 

Being gay is the least challenging element of their lives now, and fuck it if they’re going to apologize to anyone, especially themselves.

 

Not like they ever articulate that.

 

“You gonna drop the soap or wash me with it, bitch,” Dean says after he’s rinsed the shampoo from his hair.

  
Jax snorts and does a reach around with one soapy hand.  Dean’s suddenly quiet, all the smart-ass driven out of him by Jax’s hand on his still-sensitive cock, by the slick finger he’s sliding teasingly down the crack of Dean’s ass.

 

Dean slaps both hands against the wall and bows his head, opening the long line of his back for Jax to mouth while he cleans between Dean’s cheeks, behind his sac, down his length.  Dean hisses and shifts, seeking some kind of relief, his body not ready but certainly willing.

 

With regret, Jax helps him rinse off, switches places with him to wash his own hair and do a quick once-over with the soap.  The water is cooling as he rinses the last of the suds from his legs.

 

They take their time drying off, Jax watching Dean while he swivels and bends, admiring his lover’s suppleness even while mourning his terrible scars, every one like a landmark on a map of Dean’s life.

 

A few months ago, Dean wouldn’t have let Jax see him like this—naked in the full light of the bathroom fluorescents.  The pink and silver mound of scars on his chest, the lines snaking like worms down his abdomen and along his ribcage made Dean self-conscious, reminding him of what put them there—his brother’s fiery end—reminding him of his resurrection, too, of the way he rose from the ashes of the end of the End and was born again, though not made whole.

 

Jax sometimes wonders if God is a sadist, rewarding his greatest champion with such an awful reminder of every kind of pain.

 

A conspicuous throat-clearing warns Jax that he’s staring, and he feels his face heat with a blush as he drags his eyes up to Dean’s.

  
“Sorry, I—“

 

“No problem.”  Dean’s voice is devoid of accusation or anger.

 

“I love you.”

 

Dean looks startled for a second before a smile creeps across his mouth and his eyes light up.  “I love you, too.  Are you dying?”

 

Jax snorts, wraps a damp towel around his waist, and moves to open the door.

  
Dean’s hand on his wrist stops him, and he looks up to see his lover giving him a long, considering look. 

 

“Jesus, Dean—no!  I’m not dying.  Can’t I just—“

 

“Yeah, you can.”  Dean answers, releasing Jax’s wrist.  “You just don’t.  Usually.”

 

“Yeah, well, things change.”

 

“That they do.”  Dean doesn’t sound entirely happy about it, but Jax is pretty sure he’s not referring to their relationship.

 

“This message the Messenger gave you—what’d he say?”

 

“Later,” Dean answers, the bitterness back in his voice, lines of his body tense once more.

  
Jax regrets it, but he knows it was inevitable.  They don’t get to be easy in their skins, not for long, not around here.

 

“I have a meeting with Hale and Blue later about security.  There have been some…issues.”

 

Dean nods, indicating that Jax should open the door, and he follows Jax out, having shrugged into his dirty tee-shirt and wrapped a towel around his waist.

 

Back in their room, Jax is tempted to abandon their towels and his time schedule and fuck Dean into the mattress.  Unfortunately, he risks a revolution if he does that, so he settles for kissing Dean breathless and then darkening the love mark he’d left on his neck.

 

“You know how much shit I’m gonna take from Opie for that?”

 

Jax’s grin says just how much he doesn’t care.

 

“Whatever,” Dean breezes then, tying his boot laces.  “You got a job for me today, or am I on my own?”

 

“Figured you’d want to see Sam.”

 

Dean shakes his head, his mouth going tight, eyes tense.  “I saw Tara at the hospital when we dropped Chibs off.  She said there’s been no change and that they aren’t allowing visitors.  She was glad for the drugs, though, thought they’d help.  Said she’d call if there’s any change.”

 

“You want in on my meeting with Hale and Blue?”

 

“Naw.”  Hale makes Dean nervous, some ingrained knee-jerk reaction to law enforcement.  Blue doesn’t faze Dean—one outlier to another, Jax guesses—but Hale isn’t high on Dean’s list of acquaintances.

 

“I saw Chuck—“  Jax is interrupted by a knock at the door, Bobby’s voice coming muffled and apologetic through it.

  
“They need you at the Gate.”

 

“Shit,” they say in unison.

 

“Coming,” Jax answers.

 

“I hope not,” Bobby responds.

 

Jax and Dean share an eyeroll and then head out, Dean following Jax through the club and out to the parking lot, coming with him by unspoken but perfectly understood accord.  The Reverend is a shared problem.

 

They take the Impala, Jax recognizing Dean’s longing look toward it for what it really is.  The car is comfort, a little bit of home Jax has never been able to give Dean, even with Dean’s own bike parked beside Jax’s across the lot. 

 

Jax knows better than to try to lay some ghosts to rest, however, and the easing of tension in the lines of his lover’s body as Dean slides behind the wheel of the big car is ample enough reward for sacrificing some time on his bike.

 

“Fuck,” Dean says, drawing Jax’s eyes from the side window to the front to take in a milling crowd of citizens between them and the Junker Bunker.

 

Even before he’s all the way out of the car, Jax can hear what’s drawn the crowd.  The Reverend’s voice booms out, amplified and omnipresent, a constant screed of condemnation and admonition.

 

“And the fire of the wrath of the Lord will fall upon you with all His fury, and you will burn without respite, though you cry out for mercy.  For though He offers you the grace of His son’s sacrifice, though He be the Lord, merciful and good, if you turn away from Him, if you embrace false prophets and idols, follow false kings into abomination, you shall be damned and your cries shall be as numerous as the waves of the ocean, yet none shall hear or answer.”

 

Grace is down from the tower, another dark-haired woman in her place on the big gun.  She’s smoking a cigarette and staring dead-eyed at the crowd, her other hand cradled around the stock of her assault rifle.  She looks deceptively at ease.

  
The crowd parts for Jax and Dean, closes behind them as they approach the Bunker and the waiting Grace. 

 

“What the hell’s going on?”  The harangue beyond the gate has gotten louder still, and Jax tries not to wince as the Reverend goes into overdrive about Sodomites.

 

“He’s got a bullhorn,” she answers unnecessarily.  “These people showed up a few minutes ago.  That one—“  A stabbing motion of the cigarette points to Max Steinburg. “—said they had a right to assemble and to speak to the Reverend.  Molly,”  This time, the cigarette indicates the right-hand gun tower.  “—cocked her gun for effect and aimed it at them.  Jeff’s keeping his on the crowd out front.”

 

“We want to talk to the Reverend.  We want him to be tested,” Steinburg calls out, his voice nearly drowned by the Reverend’s spiel.

 

Jax doesn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer.  For the same reason, he decides not to follow the Bunker’s maze out to the Reverend and his people.

 

Instead, Jax raises his voice enough for the soldiers in the towers and stationed along the Bunker’s interior wall to hear him.  “Carry on.  Anyone tries to come at you from either side, shoot them on my authority.”

 

An angry murmur ripples through the crowd on his side of the wall, but Jax ignores it, schooling his face to neutrality.

“That a good idea?” Dean murmurs, quiet enough that even Grace can’t hear the question. 

 

They move back toward the car, toward the crowd that has now solidified into a glaring mass of tense bodies.

 

Jax shrugs.  “We’re still in charge here.  Rushing the Bunker is an act of aggression, whichever side the rush is on.  Let ‘em figure that out the hard way if they have to.”  He’s raised his voice just enough that the people nearest them in the crowd can hear him.

 

When it becomes clear that those people have no intention of moving out of the way, Jax and Dean stop.

 

“Somebody dies, you’re going to take a lot of heat.”  Dean’s tone is conversational and clearly audible in a pause in the Reverend’s ranting.

 

Jax’s answer is a second shrug.  His heart is pounding in his chest, throat dry, but Jax manages to sound nonchalant when he says, “I’m the King for as long as I’m supposed to be.  They don’t like it, they can take me down.”

 

He lets Steinburg, Eloise, others in the crowd—a few familiar, native faces but mostly newcomers, he notes—see the resolve in his face.  This is their last warning.  He’s tired of this shit, and he hasn’t got time for it.  If they’re going to try something, might as well be sooner as later.

 

The crowd parts as if on a sign, silence of the threatening kind following them through a gauntlet of resentment.

 

When they’re back at the car, out of earshot of the crowd, which has once again returned to milling uncertainly and staring at the Impala and the unseen Reverend by turns, Dean says, “You make martyrs out of them, you only strengthen their cause.”

 

Jax nods.  “Yeah, maybe.  Or maybe they learn that the sacrifice isn’t worth it.  This isn’t the fucking American Revolution.”

 

“They might not see it that way.”  Dean’s voice is uncharacteristically reasonable, and he’s making an observation that Jax himself might have voiced only a day earlier.  In fact, there’s a reversal of roles going on here, Dean more reluctant to use force, Jax almost eager to bring this thing to a head.

 

But Jax has always had a stubborn, contrary streak, and Dean’s reaction makes Jax mad, a sudden, blooming heat that surprises him into saying, “You got something to say about the way I’m doing things here?  Maybe your infinite experience with Charming makes you an expert?”

 

Dean gives an unhappy, terse laugh, and pulls the car around in a tight three-point turn.  He doesn’t answer Jax, and as the anger drains from him as quickly as it had blossomed, Jax realizes he’s fucked up. 

 

“I’m sorry, man.  You know I didn’t mean—“

 

“It’s no problem.”  Dean’s voice is indifferent, the kind of blankness that comes with effort.  Jax feels cold; he hasn’t heard that tone directed at himself in a long, long time.

 

“Dean—“

 

“Forget it.”  And there’s warning there now, of a kind Jax would do well to heed.

 

But Jax is stubborn and a little desperate to make it right, and he ignores Dean’s warning in favor of putting a hand on his thigh, needing to touch his lover both for his own reassurance and to let Dean know that he’s sorry.

  
“I wasn’t thinking.  It was a shitty thing to say, and you know I didn’t mean it.”

 

With a jerk of the chassis and a short chirp of the brakes, Dean brings the Impala to the curb and rams her into park.  He turns furious eyes on Jax, who is doing his best to present a calm, apologetic expression, if only to hide the fact that Dean’s ferocious rage makes him hot, curls something dark deep inside of him and makes him want to beg for things that he and Dean have never done.

 

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_

 

“Take your hand off of me.”  The deadly calm of Dean’s voice belies his expression, which is full of intent to harm. 

 

Jax shakes his head.  “No.”  But what they both hear is, _Make me_.

 

“Jax…” Dean’s voice is deep, a growl from the pit, the monster in the dark.  Jax feels his breath tighten, has to open his mouth to get air.

 

“You belong here,” Jax says, hardly recognizing his tone of voice, the roughness of it, the way he’s begging without using the words for Dean to do something to him, something he didn’t know he wanted and would never be able to ask for.

 

Dean closes the distance between them in a lunge that’s more power than grace.  Jax’s head strikes the window as Dean forces his tongue into Jax’s mouth, brings his hands up to crush Jax’s face in a bruising grip.  The kiss is punishment and pain, blood-metal catching at the corner of his lip where Dean forces Jax’s mouth too wide, a throb growing in his jaw from the angle of the kiss and Dean’s hard hands.  He moans, letting go of some last vestige of pride, and bucks for contact, wanting Dean to hold him down, to rip from him every ounce of volition, every choice.

 

Dean’s teeth fasten on Jax’s bottom lip, biting sharp and hard, bringing tears to his eyes and an involuntary mewling sound out of him that in his right mind might have embarrassed him.  Now, it draws an answering growl from Dean, who works a hand between them to press against Jax’s hard cock through his denim.

  
His zipper catches on the tender skin of his cock through the thin fabric of his boxers, and it hurts like fuck for a few blazing seconds before Jax comes in his jeans, clawing at Dean’s tense shoulders and babbling into his mouth.

 

For long moments, Jax can’t hear anything but the blood pounding in his ears, can’t feel anything but the limpid spreading afterglow of pleasure weighing him down against the seat.  Then sensation returns—the cold leather of the seat against his lower back, where his cut and tee have ridden up.  The sting of his swollen lip, the damp stickiness of jizz in his shorts.

 

He levers his eyes open, narrowed against the sunlight hanging mid-sky over Dean’s left shoulder.  Dean’s staring at him with the strangest expression, and it takes Jax’s fuck-slowed brain long seconds to process what it means.

 

Then he manages to make his broken mouth say, “I fucking love you,” though it sounds like something else, like he’s been on a three-day bender and is stoned besides.

 

Dean lowers his face to Jax’s, resting his forehead on Jax’s, and Jax feels a twinge of protest in his neck, where his head is bent at an odd angle against the window.

 

“I’m sorry,” Dean whispers, breath a hot wash on Jax’s face.

 

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Jax assures him, reaching a weak hand up to grasp the back of his lover’s neck and squeeze.  “Now get off me before my neck breaks.”

 

It’s a struggle to sit upright, a pain to feel the wet material chafing his damp cock.  Jax wouldn’t trade the discomfort for anything, though.  He feels like something’s been yanked out of him, a splinter or a bullet. 

 

He gives Dean a wild smile that pulls the abused edges of his mouth and sets them stinging.  “I should piss you off more often,” he says, but it’s an apology, and they both know it.

 

Jax spares a thought as they’re pulling away from the curb for the crowd at the Gate, glancing in the sideview mirror to see if they noticed what has just happened.  Somehow, though, he can’t bring himself to care if the display of violent affection robbed him of some degree of authority.  In his chest, his heart beats strong, and beside him, his lover brings them home, stopping as he parks in the clubhouse lot and shuts the engine off to favor Jax with a long, long look.

 

“We aren’t finished here.”

 

Jax lets his eyes linger on Dean’s crotch.

 

“That’s not what I meant,” said with fond exasperation.

  
Jax lays a leer on Dean that makes the other laugh.

 

“Fine.  Maybe it _is_ what I meant.  But we also have to talk about this sudden change in your attitude, man.  A few days ago, you were pissed at me for saying we should use a show of force to back these assholes down.  Now you’re the one wanting to go all Genghis Khan on their asses.”

 

“Genghis Khan didn’t have M-50s,” Jax points out—reasonably, he thinks.

 

Dean shoots him the bird.  “You know what I mean, bitch.”

 

“Yeah, I do.  And you’re right.  I shouldn’t have baited them like that.  It was stupid and short-sighted.  I’m just fucking sick of everyone having a fucking _opinion_.  They want to disagree, fine, they can take it to the town council.  But this isn’t a fucking democracy, it’s a—“

 

“Monarchy?”  Dean’s voice is quiet, laden with meaning. 

 

Jax sees in Dean’s face how serious he is, sees there the quick intelligence and brutal pragmatism he’s always found paired in him.  God, but he really loves this man.

 

“Yeah.  Yeah, I guess it is.”

 

“And you’re the one in power…for now.”

 

Jax nods, following Dean’s idea to its logical conclusion.

  
Dean gets there first.  “Gotta be strong to stay on top, Jax.  It’s not like you got this from your daddy and will pass it down to your kid.  Being king means hanging onto power with whatever you’ve got. You think that’s what God wants for us?”

 

He can’t keep the surprise from his face, and Dean sees it, laughs a little, self-deprecating, and rubs a hand over his face.

 

“You got a different opinion on God these days?” Jax is careful to sound interested, not skeptical.  Dean rarely wants to talk about this shit; damned if Jax’ll scare him off it now.

 

Dean shrugs.  “I don’t know.  Maybe.  Or not.  I just think there’s got to be something in between paradise and the jungle.  It doesn’t have to be either/or.”  He shrugs again, a weary motion.

 

“Be nice if He’d explain it to us, then.”

 

Dean’s snorts in agreement.  “Ain’t that always the problem…”  He sounds tired.

 

“I’ve got to talk to these guys,” Jax says, looking out the rear window at Hale’s sheriff’s Jeep and Blue’s big pick-up pulling in.

 

“Yeah, you do that.”

  
“What’re you gonna do?”

 

“Catch up on my reading,” Dean answers, shooting a look at the roof of the clubhouse.  Though it’s still Jax’s retreat, it’s no longer exclusive.  Dean’s shared it for a lot of months now and welcome to it.  They keep copies of each of their father’s books there, in a waterproof chest, along with weed, lighters, candles, lube, blankets, Jack…pretty much anything they’d need to have a good private party.

 

“I’ll see you there,” Jax answers, the hint of dark promise in his voice.

 

Dean smirks in answer and gets out of the Impala, sketching a wave at Blue and Hale, who are talking next to Hale’s Jeep, as he strides toward the clubhouse door.

 

Jax watches Dean walk away, admiring the breadth of his shoulders, feeling again the pooling tightness in his belly of hunger for him, for the way he can make Jax feel.  Then he shakes it off, puts on his game face, crosses the lot and says, “Inside.”

 

“Trouble?” Hale asks, eyeing Jax.

 

Jax is confused for a moment until he realizes that the man’s eyes are on his mouth, which is when he remembers.

 

“No,” Jax says, touching his lip, fingertip coming away smeared with tacky blood.

 

Blue laughs, and only then does the light dawn in Hale’s face along with a deep red blush.

 

The two men fall in behind Jax, who’s counting on the dim light of the clubhouse to hide any wet spots on his jeans, realizing only belatedly that he probably reeks of jizz.

 

“I’m gonna clean up,” he says, waving the two toward a table near the bar.  “J.C., take care of these boys, will you?”

 

The sweetbutt gives a gorgeous smile, winks at Jax, knowing eyes tracking from his crotch to his lips.  He sighs, guessing he’ll probably never hear the end of this.

 

He’s relieved to find that Dean’s come and gone from their room, the only evidence of his passage a clean pair of Jax’s boxers draped on the end of the unmade bed.

  
“Smart-ass,” he says aloud, fondly, shucking his jeans to change.

 

Once he’s tucked away in dry shorts, Jax takes a minute to stare into the dusty mirror over the dresser and examine himself.  From the neck down, he’s fine.  But his mouth looks like he just sucked off a gang of Freaks and there’s something wild in his eyes that he hopes no one else will see.  A quiet exultation burns in his veins, and he wonders if he’s losing it and then laughs, deciding he doesn’t care.  
  
Crazy feels fucking awesome.

 

Back out in the clubhouse, he sits at the table, sucks gratefully at a beer, washing the last of the stale metal taste from his tongue, and listens to Hale’s proposal for increased security in the form of volunteer deputies and a couple of town councilmen.  Beside him, Blue’s eyes are grave, one big hand splayed wide on the tabletop, fingers unmoving, as if by force of will the man can harness his impatience and channel it into the wood.

 

“That’s not enough,” Blue says when Hale finally finishes, beating Jax to it.  “There’s going to be war, Hale.  And we either have to confiscate their guns,” Blue looks like he’s just swallowed a Freak’s rotten left nut when he says that, “Or prepare to take them on.”

 

“Blue’s right.  These people are going to come at us pretty soon, especially if the Reverend keeps pounding home the whole false king bit.  We don’t have a lot of choices here.  An election is out of the question right now.  There’s big shit coming.”  Jax fills them in on the Messenger of God and his approximate message, sparing a second to wonder where Bobby has taken the guy.

 

“This guy for real?”  Blue asks, mostly without skepticism.

 

Jax nods, takes a pull of his beer.  “Yeah, I think so.  Bobby does, too.”

 

Blue nods like that’s good enough for him.

 

“Why don’t you let the Reverend be tested?” Hale asks.  Blue waits, same question obvious in his eyes.

Jax nods, looks at the beer bottle, condensation beading on its sides, at his hand, callused and rough with riding and work, at the scarred tabletop where he’s eaten so many meals with his brothers.  He takes a breath and looks back up at them, sees their faces, patient and biding, an implicit confidence in the way they wait for him to speak.

 

Nodding slowly, as much to himself as to them, Jax says, “Yeah, I think it’s time.  But we need to be ready.  If this guy passes and comes in, the crowd on our side of the Gate is going to take it as a sign that they’re in the right.  They’re going to want to use it as an excuse to push me out.  If we aren’t ready, they might get what they want.”

 

“We’ll be ready,” Blue promises, rising.  Hale follows suit, nodding.

 

“Sun sets in an hour or so.  You want to do it at dusk?”

 

Jax nods, an ironic smile on his face.  “Seems appropriate.”

 

Hale and Blue shake his hands, promise to be there with their people, exit.  “Bobby!” Jax calls.  The councilor appears from the back of the club, Messenger in tow.  “Get the crew together.  We’re going to the Gate at sunset to see if the Reverend’s going to fry.”

 

“You got it.”

 

“Hey, any word on Chibs?”

 

“Yeah, Tara says he’s good.  Bitchin’ that he can’t come home.”

 

Jax laughs.  “Good to hear.  I’ll be back in ten,” he says then, indicating his destination with a hand gesture.  Bobby nods, walkie already in his hand to signal the Sons back to the clubhouse.

 

There’s a ladder up to the roof around the side of the club, so Jax heads down the long corridor past his room, pausing, as he always does, to look for a moment at his father’s bike, at the picture of his mother and father when they were younger than he is now, smiling at the camera, looking free and happy.  At his mother’s wedding ring in the glass ashtray next to the kickstand.  For just an instant, a longing comes over him to give it all away, to be like they were—young and free, nothing to hold them down or hold them back.

 

But he remembers what that youthful freedom ultimately cost them, how it turned into what he’s fighting to defend right now.  He figures it’s worth the sacrifice of sleep and freedom if it means keeping alive the club they built from their blood and bones.

 

At the top of the ladder, Jax pauses, breath caught in his chest not by the exertion of the climb but by the sunlight, a burning gold, catching the edges of Dean’s eyelashes where they’re downturned, reading a page from John Teller’s book.

 

Dean looks up, and Jax wonders if the other can hear his heart thundering in his chest.  This is ridiculous, this feeling—fear and hope and love and dread all coiled, knotted like a nest of snakes, their writhing sparking something in his belly that might be hunger or terror.

 

“You okay?”

 

And it’s Dean’s voice, the one he hears even in dreams now, a little rough, a little weary, but all his.  Like a live wire channeled down a lightning rod, Jax feels grounded, rooted there on the rung, hanging out over a long fall, Dean’s eyes his anchor, holding him there.

 

“Yeah,” he tries, but it comes out a croak.  He clears his throat, wrenches himself from the spell to put his sneaker soles firmly on the rough surface of the roof.  “Yeah, I’m good.  We’re heading for the Gate.  Gonna test the Reverend.”

 

“Hale and Blue behind you?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Good.”  Dean takes a final look at the passage he was reading, closes the binder, stows it in the chest and closes that, too. 

 

Then he stands and stretches, shirt and jacket riding up enough to show a slender pale line of belly skin.  Jax licks his lips, suddenly nervous.

 

“I—“  He starts, can’t manage to get past it, and Dean eyes him narrowly, like he’s looking for something wrong.

 

They close the space between them with even steps, Jax’s heart kicking against his ribs as Dean approaches.  It’s like all the air has been sucked from the sky with the dying sunlight.

 

Dean’s burnished in gold and pink, every freckle a sentinel against the pale stretch of his skin, and tenderness wells so suddenly in Jax that he has to swallow around a lump in his throat and clench his hands to keep from reaching out to trace the constellations on Dean’s cheek.

 

“You okay?” Dean asks again, not touching, as if by some instinct he knows it would break Jax apart.

 

“I love you,” he says, and though he’s said it before—hell, this is the third time today, a new record—there’s something in the tone that startles a sound out of Dean—just the briefest rush of breath, but audible in the stillness of fast approaching twilight.

 

“I love you, too.”

 

“No matter what.”

 

“Jax, what are you—?”

 

“I’m the one, Dean.  I’m God’s chosen King.  You have to know that.”

 

“I do,” says Dean, clearly mystified by Jax’s tone, by the way his eyes are searching Dean’s face for a sign.

  
“You have to _know_ that,” Jax repeats, putting a hand on Dean’s chest, feeling his lover’s heart pounding as fast as his own beneath the cage of his ribs.

 

Dean’s eyes search Jax’s, uncertainty growing to unease as Jax waits, look steady, not giving anything away.  This has to be Dean’s choice.

“I know you,” Dean says, and he does.  He _does_.  Jax sees it in the lines around Dean’s mouth and around his eyes, put there by grief and love, tears of sorrow and tears of joy, by all the years they never knew each other and all the ways they’d always known, the ways they’d been meant for each other since the day each became son and brother.

 

Jax nods, unable to speak any more, hand still on Dean’s chest, Dean’s hands at his sides, giving Jax the lead, letting him in without saying a word.

 

“Whatever you need,” Dean says at last, but he means, _I have faith in you.  I love you.  I’ll follow you anywhere._

 

Jax moves then at last, wrapping his arm around Dean’s shoulders and pulling him into a tight embrace, breathing private things into the skin of his lover’s neck, into his ear and the tender spot behind it, both of them trembling as if the earth was swaying gently under their feet.

  
When they part, Dean’s wearing resolution like armor and Jax is smiling, wicked and wide.  “Let’s go burn this fucker down,” Jax says, swinging a leg over the side to the ladder and starting the descent to the ground.

 

Dean smiles an answering smile, fierce and full of righteous fury.  “Hell, yeah,” he answers, following Jax down.

 

*****

 

 

 _In this, as in all things, there have been things left out that are true, things put in that aren’t.  It’s up to every man to figure out for himself what’s real, what matters.  Even if you don’t have all the answers, even if the questions themselves aren’t clear, if you keep trying you’ll get where you need to be with a little faith, a lot of luck, and a kickass soundtrack backing it all up._ (The No-Shit Epistles 69:1-3 [Apocryphal])

 

Between the clubhouse and the Gate, they have to pass the spot where Dean tongue-fucked Jax into submission only a couple of hours before. 

 

He passes the spot without comment, mostly because he’s riding solo.  Jax and the Sons are in a phalanx in front of him, the throaty roar of their symphony a nice counterpoint to the deep rumble of his own big engine.

 

Pointedly, though no one is there to notice, Dean adjusts his cock, half-hard since that hug on the roof when he’s pretty sure he and Jax got married.

 

Or maybe baptized.  
  
He’s not clear on it all.  What Dean knows for sure is that he’s never been more afraid and more alive than when he said to his lover, “Whatever you need.”

 

It had shocked him as much that he meant it without conditions or reservations as that he’d said it out loud in the first place.

 

Dean doesn’t want to dwell, however, so it’s convenient in a way to see a mob of Charming’s citizens lined up in orderly rows between them and the Gate.

 

He gets out of the car to the by now familiar warnings of the Reverend, who’s on the subject of abomination at the moment—Dean feels special—and goes around to the trunk to retrieve his favorite gun, the sawed-off he’s had since he was a kid. 

 

It’s not great for rapid fire, but it makes a hell of a hole—not to mention an impressively loud noise—and he’s hoping to minimize the carnage for a change.  No sense shooting everyone.  An object lesson or two should be enough if it comes down to bullets and brawling.

 

Jax smirks and makes a sound as Dean comes up to them, and even Opie snickers.    
  
“What?”

 

“You got a little—“ Juice begins, pointing to Dean’s cheek.

 

Reaching up to touch the indicated spot, Dean rubs, pulling his fingers away to find peach-blush lipstick on his fingers.

 

He grins, a little embarrassed and a little pleased.  J.C. had given him a champion’s send-off. 

 

“You’re such a slut,” Jax drawls, but his tone is light, matching the grin on his face that spreads to his eyes.  Dean’s tempted to kiss _him_ for luck, but he knows better.  They have to maintain the guy code, at least in front of Blue’s people, who are lined up in two impressively armed columns, one to either side of the road, flanking the Sons where they stand in an irregular formation facing the crowd of dissidents.

Dean, Jax, and Opie are front and center, with Bobby, Piney, Lewis, and Gordie to Opie’s right and slightly behind them, and Sack, Juice, and Gyp to Dean’s left. 

 

Dean takes in the orderly mob ahead of them.  Steinburg and Petry are in the front, though Petry looks like he’ll break and run at the first sign of real violence.  Behind them are Eloise Cutter, Marcy Walker, Jim Edriss, Lionel Whitting, Jenny Stark, and Baltimore Rees.  This last surprises Dean.  They’d had a beer over at Grady’s not long ago, and at the time the transplant from Nevada had seemed happy enough.

 

He glances past those people to the others, most with familiar faces he recognizes, at least enough to say hello to.  Here and there are people Dean would swear he’s never seen before—not entirely out of the question, since there have been a lot of new admissions lately. 

 

And then there are the faces that are painfully familiar.  Whit Marksey is there, which isn’t all that surprising, and Mitch Auburn, another predictable face, but beside him, mouth a tight, angry line, eyes rimmed in red like he hasn’t slept in days is Dan Jett.

 

Beside him, Jax makes a sound—just a quick intake of breath, but Dean knows he’s looking at their friend, too.  Dan and Jenny Jett have been residents of Charming their whole lives.  Jax and Jenny went to school together.  Dan was the one who’d suggested starting a grocery store in the months following the building of the wall and the Junker Bunker, to give people a sense of normalcy.

 

Dean suspects that he knows why Dan is here.  They’d gotten a call only a few minutes after coming down from the roof.  It was Tara, in tears, telling them that little Jessica Jett hadn’t responded to treatment and had died. 

 

Dean figures that Dan, mourning for his baby, heart-sick and angry at the universe for taking her from them so soon after she’d been given them, wants to do something, anything, to ease the pain.  Blaming Jax is easy.

 

Dean wants to touch Jax, to tell him it’s not his fault, but no show of weakness can be suffered in this place, so he settles for willing the bereaved man to walk away, to leave this fight alone.

 

“Go be with your wife,” he says, not realizing he was going to speak at all until the words are out of his mouth.  “Dan, Jenny needs you now more than ever.  You don’t want to do this.”

 

“Don’t tell me what I want, you cocksucking son of a bitch.  If it weren’t for you perverts, my Jessica would still be alive.”

 

The venom in his voice, his absolute conviction, staggers Dean, and he can’t keep the surprise from his face.  Dan and Jenny have never been anything but open-minded, warm-hearted people.  This is the grief talking.

 

Knowing that and handling it are two different things, of course.

 

“Dan, I think you’d better go now while you still can,” Jax says, in what passes for a reasonable tone.  But Dean knows the quickest way to piss Jax off is to attack the people he loves.

 

This time, he does reach out to Jax, just the slightest touch to his arm to say, _It’s okay.  Back off._   He steps a little ahead of the Sons, looks only at Dan.

 

“I know what grief can do to you, Dan, how it can twist you up inside.  When Sam died, all I wanted was to crawl into a hole and die or kill every last thing on this planet for making me feel like that.  I get it.  I do.  But you have a family at home—a wife who’s grieving for her baby girl and who’s probably scared out of her mind that she’s gonna lose you, too.  You have to be with Jenny.  You don’t belong here.  Go home, Dan.  Hold her.  Tell her how much you love her.  Don’t let the hate eat away at the good things you still have.”

 

All the while, the Reverend preaches his special brand of salvation:  “The people of Sodom did not heed God’s warning, and only the faithful, Lot solely—and his family—were saved.  You harbor abomination among you and are led by perversion into iniquity and perdition.  But I say to you that it is not too late, people of the New Canaan, to lift yourself from the brink of the pit and be saved.  From fire shall He save you, so too from plague, plague of man and plague of the devil.  Heed me, for the Lord has given unto me the words of His promise, and to you I give them:  Have faith in His people and you shall be saved.”

 

Whether Dean’s words got to Dan or not, they’ll never know, for just then, there’s a terrific squealing noise, like metal being wrenched apart by some colossal force, and the Reverend’s voice falls silent.

  
The dissidents break ranks to turn and stare at the Bunker, from beyond which the noise had come.  As they speculate aloud on what caused it and exchange uneasy glances, Jax overtakes Dean and begins to walk toward the gate.

 

Max Steinburg is the first to step out of the way, Jarvis Petry the next, and they make their more or less easy way through the confused and unsettled crowd.  No one so much as raises a voice in their direction, which is a relief.

 

Blue’s people flank the dissidents, coming to a sort of informal parade rest between them and the Gate, Jax and the Sons already having made it to the towers, where they can see Grace and Earl staring fixedly out over the no-man’s-land toward the testing place.

 

Soon enough, Dean can see what they’re looking at.

  
The Reverend is standing a few feet from the place where God’s holy fire strikes down those who are not worthy of Charming’s protection.  On the spot itself stands the Messenger of God, coat billowing in an unnatural wind, an incandescent light pouring from the exposed skin of his face and hands. 

 

The Voice speaks through the open portal of the Messenger’s mouth, and Dean hears it behind his ears, inside his head—deeper than.  He feels it becoming truth in every atom of his being.

  
It is intrusive and intimate in a terrible way, and he shakes with it, but when the Voice ceases, Dean _knows_.

 

When Jax turns to look at Dean, Dean sees that Jax has learned something, too.  He wipes tears from his face without shame and wants to reach out, but he cannot.  He knows Jax has a duty greater than the one he owes to any individual, and Dean, with effort, tears his eyes from Jax’s face and fixes them instead on Jax’s goal.

 

By the time Jax reaches the Messenger, he has sunk to his knees, and the light is fading from his face.  In place of Aesop Werner’s eyes are white orbs.  From his lips pours blood, almost radiant in the last light of day.  The man, an empty vessel, splays wide in the testing circle, and from above comes a familiar rumble.

  
Dean sees Jax stand and take a step back from the fallen man, looking up, though they all know well by now that there will be no cloud, no sign from the sky of the fire it is about to unleash.

 

Instead, the light seems to burst from the ground beneath the circle, piercing through Aesop Werner’s lifeless body to form a single shaft of brilliant white light that arrows upward toward the first star of night where it brightens as the sky deepens to indigo.

 

Even as Jax turns to face the Reverend Rounder, Aesop Werner’s body seems to disintegrate, turning to a fine white powder that blows from the crushed macadam of the circle in the very last of the unnatural breeze that the Messenger had raised with his coming.

 

“Step up, Preacher man,” Jax says without preamble.  He makes a sweeping gesture toward the spot where the Messenger of God had stood and spoken and dissolved only moments before.

 

The Reverend looks put upon rather than afraid, and Dean has to hand it to the man—he really believes his own twisted scripture, or he’d have better sense than to step ahead like he’s doing. 

 

Dean wonders what the Reverend heard when the Voice spoke, if it has any approximation to what Dean himself understood.  He has to think not, or the guy would be halfway to Utah by now.

 

“Let the Lord call upon all of us to be tested as one that we may prove ourselves His people and in His name reclaim the Golden City.”

 

Jax says nothing, waiting out the grandstanding.  At last, though, the Reverend stalks forward, turns to face the assembled faithful, and hold up his hands as if calling lightning from the sky.

 

Like they’d rehearsed it, the people begin to sing, something martial and full of wrath, fury, and salvation won through suffering.

  
They get halfway through the first refrain when a shaft of vicious energy slices open the darkening sky and purges the earth of the Reverend Jeremiah S. Rounder.

 

But before Jax or Dean or any of the Sons can speak a word to the waiting crowd, who are now crying out in fear, eyes hidden in the uncertain light of early dark, a whirlwind in the circle gathers the Reverend’s dust, and static blooms along the surface of the ball until it crackles with electrical energy.  Dean sees Jax take an uncertain step back toward the Gate, but he knows his lover isn’t really afraid.  None of the righteous are. 

 

In fact, Dean’s almost expecting it when the tiny, electrified particles of the ex-Reverend fly apart, seeking targets like the world’s smallest missiles.

 

It would be beautiful if not for the screaming.

 

The lightning bugs scatter among the Reverend’s congregation, and anyone they touch goes up like an electric torch, a flameless fire that consumes them utterly.  Half-choked screams, sobs and begging cries ring out in the dark, but Dean cannot really make out what is happening except when another person is struck and glows intense and trembling before flaming out forever.

 

The klieg lights come on an instant after Dean remembers they have them, and what he sees shocks even him, who has, after all, watched Lucifer fall, been to Hell, and risen from the dead…twice.

 

Standing in the field where there was once a thriving tent city are the smoldering remains of every temporary dwelling and a few shaking people whose faces, washed to death-white by the bright lights, reflect nothing so much as an absence of any understanding.

  
He wonders if they’ve been damaged beyond repair.

 

Dean and the Sons move up to stand behind Jax without a word to him.  Dean stops with a few inches to spare, knowing that Jax will feel him there behind him, as he will always be. They approach the surviving few with careful motions and quiet words, as if these pathetic people were somehow precious and holy.

  
Who knows?  Maybe they are.

 

From the base of the Bunker, Blue calls, “Everyone okay out there?”

 

Jax gives the all-clear signal.

 

“Dean’s needed at the hospital,” Blue calls out again, and that stops Dean, who sees Jax half-turn toward him, face washed out by the klieg lights, expression shadowed.  

 

“I’ll come with you.”

 

But Dean’s already shaking his head.  “You’re needed here, Jax.  And I think I have to do this on my own, anyway.”  He doesn’t let Jax say another word, simply turns on a booted heel and heads back at a steady clip, shoulders back, head up, trying not to let the fear eat him from the inside out.

 

He has a feeling what he’s going to hear when he gets to the Gate, thinks he knows for certain what the words will be.  He tries to breathe evenly and forget for a minute what it’s going to feel like, and when he gets to Blue, he’s more or less prepared.

 

“What is it?” he asks, already seeing the answer in the other man’s face.

 

*****

 

 _Most of the time it’s pretty good to be king.  Sometimes it sucks.  The difference between the two times?  The people with me.  It’s always the people._   (The No-Shit Epistles 76:11-14 [Apocryphal])

 

When Dean leaves him on the field, Jax has a moment of paralysis profound enough to make him wonder if some of the lightning had hung around.  Shaking himself free of it at last, he takes a troubled, hesitant step after Dean, but Opie’s hand on his shoulder stops him.  “Don’t,” his best friend says, not unkindly but firm.  “You’re needed here,” he echoes, taking in the small crowd of terrified people with a simple gesture.

 

Drawing a long breath, Jax tightens his jaw, squares his shoulders, and forges on, watching the Sons herd the last of this lost flock together so that they may be driven toward the Gate and the waiting world beyond.

 

Not one of them speaks, though a little girl is crying, holding desperately tight to another girl not much older than Sam.

 

“C’mon, honey,” Jax says, lifting up the little girl and putting his hand on the other’s covered head.  “Let’s get you home.”

 

After a hesitant moment, during which Jax wonders if he’s just done exactly the wrong thing, the girl he’s holding puts her arms around his neck and rests her head against his shoulder.  The older girl beside him reaches up to wrap a cold, soft little hand in his much larger, harder one.

 

And like that, Jax leads his people into the promised land.

 

Just inside the Bunker, Blue says, “Peri Winkler says she needs to see you at the station ASAP.”

 

Jax looks to Blue and Horse and the others who had waited just inside the Bunker, keeping the still-milling dissidents back from the Gate and watching Jax and the Sons’ backs when he was out there against the Reverend. 

 

“Can you work with Ope, get these folks settled?  Make sure the kids see the docs right away.”  They still don’t know where the sickness came from, and he wants to be sure he’s not bringing more of the same into the town.

 

Ope gives him a tight look over the heads of the gathered refugees of God’s big act of wrath. 

 

“Take her?” Jax says a little more quietly, prying the girl’s arms from around his neck and hushing her with private words that are promises.  The girl beside him releases his hand with a heart-breaking courage that makes him want to scream.  She takes Sack’s hand like she’s being led to the slaughter—or like the slaughter has come and gone, and her sacrifice has gone unnoticed.

 

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Ope.”

 

Juice and Bobby fall in to either side of him as they make their way toward what remains of the would-be rebellion.  Jax is relieved to see that Dan Jett is gone but unsurprised to see Max Steinburg still there.

 

“The Reverend?” he asks.  His tone suggests he already knows the answer.

 

“He’s gone.  Those people need help,” Jax adds, not even slowing down as he passes them.  Max and the others are no threat to him anymore.

 

Even as he reaches his bike and spares a glance back, he sees Max and the others coming forward to offer Opie and Blue their help.  Maybe it’s hope that surges through him then, but it’s overtaken almost at once by a dull ache in his chest that makes it hard to breathe.

 

He’d seen in Blue’s face what news the man had had for Dean.

 

They start their bikes, turn them around, head back in the direction of WCHM, the defunct cable access station that now houses Peri Winkler’s short wave radio equipment.

 

At the station, the petite woman—hardly a woman, barely twenty-one—pushes her thick-framed glasses up her nose and tucks one brown lock behind her ear in a repetitive motion that complements the tremble in her voice.

 

Always shy, Peri seems particularly nervous now, and she doesn’t make eye contact as she says, “It might be nothing,” in a way that suggests no one there believes what she’s saying, including herself.  “It’s just… .”

 

“Peri,” Jax says, sternly but without any real heat.  The girl’s anxious enough.  “Tell us what’s going on.”

 

Her eyes dart from Bobby to Juice to Jax, settling at last for focusing on his Adam’s apple, as near as he can tell.

  
“I heard this sound…in my head?  And…I just knew.”

 

Jax is nodding encouragingly.  Apparently, the Voice had reach.

 

“I—.”  She stutters to a halt and then, looking all at once more confident, she turns toward the office where her equipment is spread out on tables and desks.  “Here, just listen.”

  
Peri turns a dial and sound fills the room.  It takes Jax a second to realize it’s a human voice.  Static and distance distort it, but it’s definitely a man speaking in real-time, though as if down an impossibly long, hollow tube.  Jax can hear the space between them.

 

He can also hear the man’s hail, “I repeat, this is Houston Station calling all listeners on this channel.  Change to 2300 kilohertz, 121m.”

 

Peri turns a brightly expectant face to Jax, who raises an eyebrow meaningfully.  Dipping her head shyly, Peri turns another dial.

 

“This is Omaha Station calling all listeners.  Change to 2300 kilohertz, 121m.”

 

Another turn of her deft fingers, another voice and then another.

 

Spokane, Sioux Falls, Minnetonka, Oak Grove, Wheeling, Asheville.

 

When she looks back at him again, there are tears in her eyes, and Jax can’t do anything but nod convulsively and try to swallow around his heart, which is in his throat and pounding wildly.

“They’re from all over,” Juice says, voice the whisper of wonder.  “All over,” he repeats.

  
Jacksonville.  Arlington.  Dover.  Allentown. 

 

“Where the hell is Lockport?” Bobby asks, breaking the almost suffocating power of the moment.

 

“New York,” Peri answers, laughter-tears in her voice, eyes streaming now. 

 

“Why haven’t we heard this before?” Jax has remembered that he’s supposed to be in charge and asking questions.

 

Peri shakes her head, hands moving the dials again.  “I don’t know.  I’ve been working on these frequencies for months.  Nothing.  Then suddenly, I just knew.  I knew if I tuned to this frequency, I’d hear someone talking back.  It’s like…” she trails off, clearly unsure of the analogy she’d like to use.

  
“The scales fell from their eyes,” Bobby supplies.  “Or their ears,” he amends, considering.

 

“The Messenger,” Jax confirms, taking in the radio equipment, lights dancing as voices crackle across long-dormant speakers.  “He said there were worlds beyond worlds, that there’d be a sign.”

 

He flashes back to the Messenger’s incandescent body, to the Reverend turning into a swarm of killing dust, to what he’d felt in his breath and blood and bones when the Voice had spoken.

 

“Hell of a sign,” he muses, shaking the images from his head.  “Have you responded?”

 

Peri shakes her head.  “I wanted to wait for your okay.”

 

“Tell ‘em we’re here.  See what they want or need.  I’ll send a couple of people to help—Lucas, maybe?”  He names a young man who’s been in Charming a few months and who he’s seen Peri smiling at across the Café on a couple of occasions.

  
She blushes and bobs her head in a convulsive nod.

 

“Bobby, stay here, make sure she’s okay?”  Now that they’ve made contact, Jax isn’t going to risk losing her.

 

“You did great, Peri,” he says then, putting a hand on her shoulder.  The girl squeaks—squeaks!—and stammers something that might be, “Thank you.”

 

At least she didn’t add, “Your highness.”

 

Jax turns, Juice falling in behind him. 

 

“Things are gonna change,” Juice says as they mount up and put on their helmets.

 

“Yeah,” Jax says, but he’s not thinking about that.  He’s thinking about Dean, about Sam, and about how no matter what happens in the world, some things seem destined to stay the same.

_*****_

_Sometimes I wonder if God has a sense of humor.  Sometimes I know he does, and it’s cruel.  Most of the time, though, I don’t bother to try to figure it out.  The best I can say with any certainty is that He exists.  Beyond that, it’s none of my business what he does.  Now if only that were true both ways._ (The No-Shit Epistles 73: 1-6 [Apocryphal])

 

He hears Jax coming long before the man reaches him.  City boy, Dean thinks.  He tosses the stone he’s been holding into the Reservoir, watches the rings ruin the perfect surface of the water.

 

The exposed rock at the Point is warm under him, the sun overhead a heated touch, too.  It’s all a lie, though.  The cold coming from the dark water of the Reservoir matches Dean’s blood, sluggish in his veins.  Shock, maybe.

  
Or maybe something else.  Something permanent.

 

Jax sits down next to him without a word, stretches his sneakered feet out toward the water’s edge.

 

There are at least three sets of eyes on them from the snipers’ nests, but they might as well be the last two men on earth.

 

“Heard about Sam,” Jax says at last, and Dean feels the weight of his lover’s hand on the back of his neck, even if he can’t feel the heat of it.

 

Dean nods, bowing his head beneath Jax’s touch, wanting to slide out from under it.  It’s too much.  Too much feeling.

 

“What happened?” Jax asks after another minute, taking his hand away at last when Dean doesn’t respond to his touch.  Can’t.

 

Dean shrugs and stares unseeingly at the dark water, smooth enough in this sheltered cove to reflect the lying blue sky.

 

“He wasn’t responding to the medications we brought back.  All the other kids were, but not Sam.  Tara said it might’ve been because he was patient zero?  She and Doctor Hong are working up a theory of where the illness came from.  Might’ve even been here.”

 

Dean looks around vaguely, but he’s not really seeing the Point or the Reservoir or the woods where he and Sam had trained together.  Not really seeing Jax beside him, either.

 

“Anyway, he died.”  Dean thinks he does pretty well, saying it like that.  Like it’s just a matter of fact.

 

Jax makes a sound, hardly a sound, just an animal expression of shared sorrow, and Dean has to clench down on his heart inside because it kicks up then, pummeling his ribs, and the ice starts to shatter, piercing him in a million places, pooling in his belly, prickling up his spine.

 

“And then he came back to life,” Dean chokes out, hands starting to shake with it, with the shock of it, with the sense memory of Sam’s cooling skin where Dean had wrapped a desperate hand around his skinny little wrist, of the sudden sluggish throb of pulse against his palm, the monitor screeling in flat-line but Sam’s hand moving now under Dean’s touch, and Sam’s voice saying, weakly, “What’re you—gay or something?”

 

Jax’s hand comes back to his nape, and Dean feels it now, the heat and strength of it, the way Jax holds him together by that one point of contact.

 

“The Voice…” but his own voice breaks, and at another time, Dean might be embarrassed by the weakness.  Now, though, he’s too raw, all his usual defenses stripped away by grief and relief and a dawning recognition that something has changed irrevocably in him.  “…I knew,” Dean whispers, and Jax squeezes to say he knows, too. Dean doesn’t have to say any more.

 

“I…I was begging—God, I guess.  Just begging Him to let…  I mean, Sam’s just a little kid, you know?  And he deserves to live.  He’s got so much ahead of him, and his life was already so shitty.”

 

Jax uses the fulcrum of his grip to pull Dean against him, and Dean goes, feels the strength of Jax’s arm around his shoulder, the brush of stubble against his temple as Jax breathes, “You healed him.  You saved him.”

 

“Have faith and you shall be blessed,” Dean whispers.  “That’s what the Messenger said.”

 

He feels Jax’s nodding response.

 

Dean stiffens then as it comes back to them where they are.  Who they are.  He sits up, and Jax lets him, but he doesn’t stop touching Dean, just shifts his hold to Dean’s wrist, wrapping two fingers around it as if to assure himself that Dean’s heart still beats.

 

Dean snorts weakly, eyeing the hold Jax has on him.  “This might be the gayest thing we’ve ever done.”

 

Jax laughs.  “Not the gayest thing we will do, though,” and it’s a promise that sets a fire burning low in Dean’s belly, a heat that spreads, driving away the last of the shock.

 

Jax moves his hand to touch Dean’s jaw, and Dean turns his head at the gesture, knowing what comes next.  Jax’s mouth is warm against Dean’s chilled and wind-dried lips, his tongue a shock of heat as it slides into Dean’s mouth.  He opens wide, offering and accepting, plunges his own tongue into Jax’s mouth, feeling their hearts beating wildly against each other through the narrow bars of their ribs.

 

In unison, their walkies chirp to life, the snipers reminding them that they’re being observed.

 

Their kiss grows fiercer, then, deliberately lewd and provocative, Jax pushing Dean down onto the warm rock, ravaging him, riding his thigh, and Dean laughs into Jax’s mouth as their walkies send up another outraged squawk.

 

They break apart, both grinning like wild men, and as one raise symbolic fingers in the general direction of the snipers’ nests.

 

“So you’re a healer now,” Jax says, almost conversationally.

  
“Apparently,” Dean answers, masking most of the newness and wonder of it with a blatant adjustment of his half-hard cock.

 

“I’ve got this pain in my ass,” Jax says, and Dean’s answering laugh echoes over the still water and up into the blue, blue sky. 


End file.
